India’s tally of the coronavirus (Covid-19) disease on Thursday crossed the eight million mark as the country logged nearly 50,000 new infections in the last 24 hours, taking its tally to 8,040,203, according to the Union health ministry’s data.
However, the number of cases in the last 24 hours–49,881–mark a significant increase on the 36,470 cases reported two days ago, which was the lowest daily infection count the country had logged since 34,884 on July 18. In the previous spike, meanwhile, there were 43,893 infections.
Number of recoveries rose by 56,480 to reach 7,315,989 or 90.85% of total cases. Active cases fell by 7,116 and are at 603,687 or 7.64% of the caseload. The death toll, meanwhile, rose to 120,527 or 1.50% of the total tally, with 517 fatalities in the last 24 hours.
The fresh surge in cases comes as the national capital of Delhi is witnessing a rapid increase in infections in the last few days. On Wednesday, Delhi reported over 5,000 cases for the first time, with 5,673 infections taking the Capital’s Covid-19 tally to 370,014. This was the second straight day Delhi logged its highest single-day cases, after 4,853 on Tuesday.
The health ministry pointed out on Thursday that India’s average count of daily deaths due to the coronavirus disease has been declining in the last six weeks. There were 615 daily deaths, on average, from October 21-27 for the sixth week, the ministry said.
Also on Thursday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said it had tested a total of 106,563,440 samples thus far for Covid-19, with 1,075,760 samples being tested on October 28.