Coronavirus: India’s COVID-19 caseload breaches 89-lakh mark

Daily Covid-19 cases in India rose to over 38,000 on Tuesday after dropping below 30,000 the previous day. For the first time in three months, the daily number of tests has remained below 9 lakh for three days running (Saturday to Monday).

India witnessed a slight increase in its daily coronavirus cases count as 38,617 new infections were confirmed in the last 24 hours, according to the Union ministry of health and family welfare on Wednesday.

The country had recorded 29,164 new infections on Tuesday.

With the confirmation of over 38,000 fresh cases, India's overall coronavirus cases surged to 89,12,908. Whereas the death toll climbed to 1,30,993 after 474 new deaths were recorded in the country in the last 24 hours.

The active cases continue to decline and there are only 4,46,805 cases at present. The number of recoveries reached 83,35,109 with 44,739 new discharges in the last 24 hours.

This is the eleventh consecutive day when India reported less than 50,000 cases in a day. The last time daily new cases crossed the 50,000-threshold was on November 7.

Maharashtra has 82,904 active coronavirus cases, the highest in the country, followed by Kerala with 70,191 and Delhi with 42,004.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 9,37,279 samples for Covid-19 were tested on November 17 while a total of 12,74,80,186 samples tested so far.

On Tuesday, the Union health ministry informed that the cumulative positivity is at 7.01% while the Recovery Rate has improved to 93.42%.

Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi, West Bengal, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh account for 76.7% of total active Covid-19 cases in the country, it said.

Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has said that India continues to be among the countries with lowest cases per million population in the world, the country's figure is as low as 6,430 while there are countries having more than 20,000 cases per million population.