Omicron fury: India records 16,764 Covid-19 cases in 24 hours

India recorded 16,764 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the active case load in the country to 91,361 cases. This includes 1,270 Omicron cases, with Maharashtra reporting over 450 cases followed by Delhi with 320 cases. While Kerala reported 109 Omicron cases, the tally in Gujarat is 97 cases, Rajasthan (69) and Telangana 62 cases.

So far, the virus has been reported in 23 states. The country has been reporting over 7,000-9,000 new Covid-19 cases for the past one week. If 10,488 cases were recorded on November 21, it was 9,765 cases on December 3, and there were nearly 7,000-8,000 new cases every day until 27 December. Over 13,000 cases were recorded on Wednesday.

The government said India’s recovery rate stands at 98.36% as 7,585 patients have recovered in the last 24 hours. The cumulative tally of recovered patients since the beginning of the pandemic is now at 3.42 crore. Active cases constitute 0.26% of the country's total positive cases and the last 24 hours saw a total of 1,250 lakh tests being conducted.

India has so far conducted over 67.78 crore cumulative tests. While testing capacity has been enhanced across the country, the weekly positivity rate at 0.89% was less than 1% for the last 47 days. The daily positivity rate at 1.34% has remained below 2% for the last 88 days and below 3% for 123 consecutive days now, according to a government bulletin.

With the administration of 66.65 lakh vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India’s Covid-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 144.54 crore. About 9.48 crore people over 60 years, 15 crore people in the age group of 45-59 years, 33 crore people in the age group of 18-44 years, 97 lakh health care workers and 1.68 lakh frontline workers have been fully vaccinated.