COVID-19 cases rises by 22,854 in India, highest daily count this year

New Delhi: India has recorded 22,854 new cases of the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, with the total number of those infected having reached 11,285,561, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Thursday.

Cases recorded in the past 24 hours are two-month high and 27 per cent higher than the previous day’s figure of 17,921. The country hasn’t recorded such a peak since December 26 when it recorded 22,273 infection cases.

The death toll from the disease has reached 158,189 people, with 126 new fatalities being recorded over the past day. More than 10.93 million people have recovered in India since the start of the outbreak.

The worst-hit five states, according to the latest government updates, were Maharashtra (13,659), Kerala (2,475), Punjab (1,393), Karnataka (760), and Gujarat (675). The situation in Maharashtra, which has consistently topped the ranking over the past year, has been under scrutiny for a while with several districts imposing partial lockdowns or night curfews.

The Centre had said earlier this week that eight states and Union territories - Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Haryana - had been displaying an upward trajectory in daily new cases, with a weekly positivity rate higher than the national average of 2.29 per cent. High-level Central teams have been deputed to these states, besides Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, and Jammu and Kashmir, to help them with the situation.

Meanwhile, 2.5 crore people have received their vaccine shots till now - yesterday alone saw 13.17 lakh injections administered. The Central government has ramped up the drive across with the second phase launched on March 1.

India comes second in terms of the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, following the United States, with more than 29.15 million COVID-19 patients.

 The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. To date, more than 118 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 2.61 million fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University. (UNI)