India registered a substantial fall in its latest daily cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) as less than 30,000 new infections were recorded in the last 24 hours, the Union health ministry’s dashboard showed on Tuesday. As per the ministry’s dashboard, 26,567 new Covid-19 cases took India’s tally past the 9.7 million mark to 9,703,770.
The number of active Covid-19 cases in the country, which on Monday had fallen below 400,000 for the first time since July, remained below that mark, and are currently at 383,866 or 4.10% of the total cases. The trend of more new recoveries than daily infections also continued, as 39,045 patients were discharged in the last 24 hours, taking the number of such cases to 9,178,946 or 94.45% of total cases. Also, the virus claimed a total of 385 lives in this duration, taking the death toll to 140,958 or 1.45% of total cases.
Over the last few days, the country has been recording less than 40,000 daily Covid-19 cases. But this is the first time in several months it has logged less than 30,000 new daily infections. Globally, India remains the second worst-hit country behind the United States, and is immediately ahead of Brazil.
These latest numbers come at a time three firms, two of which are Indian, have applied for emergency use authorisation (EUA) of their respective vaccine candidates in the country. America’s Pfizer Inc was the first to seek approval for its candidate to be used in emergency cases. Pune’s Serum Institute of India (SII), which will manufacture Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate in India, and Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, which has developed Covaxin, too, have applied for their candidates to be used for emergency cases.