With 18,313 fresh cases reported in a day, India’s COVID-19 tally has climbed to 4,39,38,764, while the count of active cases of the infection has declined to 1,45,026, the Union health ministry said on Wednesday.
This comes after India was seeing a fall in cases when it had reported 14,830 new infections yesterday and 16,866 cases on Monday.
The death toll in the country has gone up to 5,26,110 with 57 more fatalities, according to the ministry’s data updated at 8 am.
The active cases account for 0.34 per cent of the total caseload, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.47 per cent, the ministry said.
A decline of 2,486 cases was recorded in the active Covid caseload in a span of 24 hours, it added.
The daily positivity rate was recorded at 4.31 per cent and the weekly positivity rate at 4.57 per cent, according to the data.
A total of 87.36 crore tests have so far been conducted to detect the viral infection in the country, including 4,25,337 in the last 24 hours.
The number of people who have recuperated from the disease has gone up to 4,32,67,571, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.2 per cent, the data showed.
According to the ministry, 202.79 crore vaccine doses have so far been administered under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive.
As part of the the Centre government’s 75-day drive, all adults in the age group of 18-75 years will get free precaution doses from July 15 at government CVC. However, as per the official data released on 26 July, more than ten days after the announcement, has revealed that only 11% of the nearly 69 crore eligible beneficiaries has taken the precaution dose.
The precaution dose coverage among the 64,89,99,721 eligible population was 8% till 14 July. India had on 10 April began administering precaution doses of Covid-19 vaccines to all aged above 18 years.
Official sources further said 29% of the 10.43 crore eligible individuals aged 60 years and above have been administered precaution dose of Covid-19 vaccine till 25 July.
According to sources, around 4 crore people have not yet taken the first dose, while about 7 crore are due for their second dose. “Of 68,97,62,152 people eligible for precaution dose, only 7,30,96,284 have taken it so far. In a few days, the number of eligible people will increase to 93 crore,” they said.
India’s COVID-19 case tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 2020, 40 lakh on September 5, 2020, 50 lakh on September 16, 2020, 60 lakh on September 28, 2020, 70 lakh on October 11, 2020, 80 lakh on October 29, 2020, 90 lakh on November 20, 2020 and the one-crore mark on December 19, 2020.
The country crossed the grim milestone of two crore Covid cases on May 4, 2021, the three-crore mark on June 23, 2021 and four crore cases on January 25 this year.
