Covid-19 Cases in India: India has recorded more than 1.59 lakh deaths.
New Delhi:
With a large increase of 35,871 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, the highest daily increase since the beginning of December, India continues to see an increase in the number of Covid cases. The government said yesterday that a total of 70 districts in 16 states saw an increase of more than 150 percent in active cases between March 1 and March 15. Amid a worrying increase, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with top ministers on Wednesday. Decisive steps such as micro-containment zone management and strict enforcement of restrictions were necessary to stop what he called Covid’s “emerging second peak.” India has so far registered more than 1.14 million rupees; 1.59 lakh people have died.
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Prime Minister Modi said on Wednesday that “some areas are seeing a greater increase than others” and called on states to focus on the issue. “If we don’t stop this right now, then there could be a situation of a nationwide outbreak. We have to immediately stop the emerging second peak and take big and decisive action,” Prime Minister Modi told senior ministers.
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India has registered more than 20,000 cases every day since last week. Yesterday, government data showed 28,903 Covid cases were recorded in the previous 24 hours, 24 percent less than the latest increase. There were 172 deaths, linked to Covid, in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, the country recorded 188 deaths, the highest this week.
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In the past 24 hours, Maharashtra recorded 23,179 new cases, the highest increase in daily cases since September 17. With more than 23 lakh of cases recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, the state has the highest number of cases in the country. Sixty percent of the country’s active cases and 45.4 percent of recent deaths are concentrated in Maharashtra, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
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Kerala (2,098 new cases), Punjab (2,013 new cases), Karnataka (1,275 new cases) and Gujarat (1,122 cases) are four other states that recorded the largest daily increase in cases in the last 24 hours.
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India has seen an increase in cases even as the government focuses on intensifying the vaccination campaign. So far, more than 3.64 crore of vaccine doses have been administered since launch began on January 16. However, India aims to vaccinate more than 30 crore people by July.
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The COVID-19 vaccine waste in India is 6.5%, while Telangana and Andhra Pradesh recorded a waste of 17.6 and 11.6% respectively, the government warned on Wednesday.
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“Vaccine waste needs to be drastically reduced. Any reduction in waste means that you end up inoculating more people and therefore the chances of interrupting the chain of infection are much higher,” said Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan.
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The Ministry of Health said today that it has analyzed 23,03,13,163 samples since the beginning of the pandemic; Yesterday more than 10 lakh of samples were analyzed.
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Covid-19 appears likely to become a seasonal disease, the United Nations said on Thursday, warning, however, against relaxing pandemic-related measures simply based on weather factors.
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Worldwide, 12 million cases have been recorded so far. The United States has registered 2.97 million cases.
(With contributions from AFP)
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