India on Wednesday witnessed a surge in new Covid cases with 41,965 fresh coronavirus infections were reported in the last 24 hours, against Tuesday’s 30,941 cases. At the same time, the country created a record in vaccination with 1.33 crore people inoculated in a single day.
With this, the total tally rose to 3,28,10,845, according to Union Health Ministry’s data released on Wednesday. Out of total fresh Covid infections reported on Tuesday, 19,622 of them were from Kerala alone, the highest among the states.
Over 70% of the cases came from Kerala, which reported 30,203 fresh infections. The daily case count in the state had stayed below 30,000 in the previous two days (29,836 on Sunday and 19,622 on Monday). But with the testing and reporting regime back to normal after the weekend break, Kerala’s test positivity rate (TPR) again shot up to nearly 19%.
India also recorded more deaths than the previous day. According to the Health Ministry, on Wednesday, India reported as many 460 deaths due to Covid, while on Tuesday 350 deaths were recorded. Now, the cumulative deaths due to Covid in the county have risen to 4,39,020 by Wednesday morning.
In the last 24 hours, the number of active cases in India was reported at 7,541 to stand at 3,78, 181. The active caseload accounts for 1.15 percent of the total cases, the health ministry’s data shows.
At the same time span, a total of 33,964 Covid patients were discharged, pushing the overall recoveries to 3,19,93,644. The recovery rate stands at 97.51 percent. The weekly positivity rate stands at 2.58 percent, which remained less than 3 percent for the last 68 days, while the daily positivity rate reported at 2.61 percent.
According to data shared by the health ministry, a total of 16,06,785 Covid samples were tested in the last 24 hours, taking cumulative tests to 52,31,84,293, till Tuesday.
Meanwhile, 1.33 crore doses of Covid vaccines were administered in India, the highest ever single-day vaccination, pushing the total vaccination in the country to 65.41 crores, Health Ministry’s report said.
The World Health Organization has said it is monitoring a new coronavirus variant known as “Mu”, which was first identified in Colombia in January.
Mu, known scientifically as B.1.621, has been classified as a “variant of interest”, the global health body said Tuesday in its weekly pandemic bulletin.
The WHO said the variant has mutations that indicate a risk of resistance to vaccines and stressed that further studies were needed to better understand it.