India continued with its recent downward trajectory of new Covid-19 cases per day as the country recorded 67,708 new infections on Thursday to take the total caseload past the 7.3 million mark to 7,307,097, the Union health ministry’s data showed.
This is for the fourth consecutive day the country has recorded less than 70,000 new cases in a day. However, it is a marginal rise from the 63,509 cases reported on Wednesday.
With these latest figures, the number of active cases has reached 812,390 or 11.42% of total cases. There were 81,514 recoveries in the last 24 hours–more than the number of new cases–as overall recoveries reached 6,383,441 or 87.05% of the total cases.
Meanwhile, the disease claimed 680 lives in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 111,266 or 1.53% of the overall caseload.
Also, India’s latest Covid-19 figures come on a day schools, cinema halls, multiplexes, entertainment parks and swimming pools reopened with strict protocols in place. Last month, the Union home ministry, in its guidelines for the ongoing fifth phase of the nationwide unlock, had allowed these to reopen, but only outside containment zones.
India had crossed the seven million case mark on October 11 amid a sharp fall in the number of new Covid-19 cases per day.
Earlier today, the health ministry, in a tweet said India’s case doubling time has improved sharply to 70.4 days from 25.5 in mid-August. A graph attached with the tweet shows India’s case doubling time at various stages in the last two months.