COVID-19: India reports 16,946 new cases, 198 deaths
New Delhi, India recorded 16,946 fresh cases of COVID-19 during the past 24 hours, pushing the country caseload to 1,05,12,09, while the death toll soared to 1,51,727 with 198 fresh fatalities.
According to Union Health Ministry, the active cases saw a drop of 904 to stand at 2,13,603. It is 2.03 per cent of the total caseload.
Maharashtra accounted for 70 of the day’s fatalities followed by 26 from Kerala and 18 from West Bengal.
On a positive note, the frontline medics were able to save 17,652 more lives, taking the total recovery count to 1,01,46,763, which is 96.52 per cent of the caseload. The fatality rate stood at 1.44 per cent.
As per Indian Council of Medical Research, 7,43,191 samples were tested on Wednesday, taking to 18,42,32,305 the total.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 92.7 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 1.98 million fatalities.
Exactly 13 days later, India announced a stringent 21-day nationwide lockdown from March 25, however, as the cases kept rising, the lockdown kept extending till May 30 after which the country started lifting the restrictions in order to revive the battered economy.
And now after several months of hardship, India is just two days away from starting to vaccinate its massive population with two recently approved COVID vaccines.
The government said that the full initial procurement amount of 1.65 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin vaccines against Covid-19 have been allocated to all states and Union territories in the proportion of healthcare workers database.