India reports over 58,000 Covid-19 cases in last 24 hours

Covid-19 pandemic is spreading fast in India indicating a third wave as the country reported 58,097 fresh cases in the last 24 hours, taking active caseload to over 2.14 lakh cases. A day ago, there were 37,379 new cases. The country also had 534 deaths due to Covid-19 in a day.

While India's total Covid-19 cases were less than 8,000-9,000 for the past 2-3 months, the country has been witnessing a huge surge in Covid-19 cases since December 28, 2021. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur had earlier predicted the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India could peak by February 3, 2022, starting from the middle of December 2021.

While Maharashtra reported 7,718 new cases in a day, 1,950 cases surfaced in Delhi, 2,590 cases in West Bengal and near thousand cases each in Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.

Daily positivity rate is now at 4.18% and weekly positivity rate is at 2.60%. As against the new cases, there were only 15,389 recoveries in the last 24 hours.

Omicron cases have also doubled in the country in the last two days to over 2,135 cases. Maharashtra accounted for 653 cases followed by 484 in Delhi, 185 in Kerala, 174 in Rajasthan, 154 in Gujarat and 121 in Tamil Nadu. Of them, over 800 patients have recovered or have been discharged.

Meanwhile, India’s cumulative Covid-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 147.72 crore as more than 96 lakh vaccine doses were given in the last 24 hours. The last 24 hours saw a total of 13,88,647 tests being conducted and India has so far conducted over 68.38 crore cumulative tests to detect the disease.

Globally, currently there are nearly 30 crore Covid-19 patients, including nearly 6 crore patients in the U.S. and over a crore patients each in countries like the U.K., Brazil and Russia.