India witnessed a spike of 14 per cent in the daily new cases on Thursday as the country recorded 43,263 new infections in the last 24 hours, while Kerala is still reporting not less than 30,000 cases daily.
For the country, this is the second consecutive day that the rise had been reported. On Wednesday, the daily Covid tally was 37,875 new infections.
With 338 Covid related deaths in the last 24 hours, the death toll rose to 4,41,749, Health and Family Welfare Ministry's data said on Thursday. India had reported 369 deaths on Wednesday. The fatality rate was reported at 1.33 per cent.
At the same time, in the last 24 hours, a total of 40,567 Covid-infected patients had recovered, pushing the country's total recovery numbers to 3,23,04,618. As per the data, the Covid recovery rate stood at 97.48 per cent.
The total active cases rose to 3,93,614, which is 1.19 per cent of the total Covid cases reported in the country.
Out of the total new cases reported on Thursday, 30,196 cases were reported in Kerala, 4,174 in Maharashtra, while 1,587 cases were reported in Tamil Nadu, according to the health ministry's report.
The report also said that a total of 53,68,17,243 samples for Covid-19 have been tested in the country, of which 18,17,639 were tested in the last 24 hours.
On the other hand, India has so far administered over 71 crore (71,65,97,428) doses of Covid vaccines, out of which 86,51,701 doses were administered in the last 24 hours.
Covid cases cross 30,000 mark again in Kerala
After a few days, Kerala on Wednesday again recorded over 30,000 cases, with 30,196 new Covid cases after 1,71,295 samples were tested in the past 24 hours, and the test positivity rate rising to 17.63 per cent.
A statement issued here by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said 27,579 people turned negative, taking the total active cases in the state to 2,39,480.
It has been a few weeks since Kerala has been leading the rest of the country in the daily new cases, total active cases, and also daily deaths. The day saw 181 Covid deaths taking the death toll to 22,001.
Thrissur district recorded the highest number cases, at 3,832, followed by Ernakulam with 3,611, and Kozhikode with 3,058. With regards to vaccination, 77.16 per cent of the Kerala population, or 2.21 crore, have been given one dose of vaccine, while 29.47 per cent, or 84 lakh, have been given both the doses.
UP records 214 active cases, 31 UP districts are Covid free
Uttar Pradesh now has only 214 active Covid cases left in the state and 31 of the total 75 districts are Covid free. This is lower than the count recorded at the onset of the first wave.
As per the latest Covid bulletin, 37 per cent of the total active cases were in just four districts, namely Prayagraj (24), Gautam Buddha Nagar (20), Lucknow (18) and Jalaun (17).
Thirty one districts of the state are now totally free from coronavirus infection and these are Aligarh, Amroha, Ayodhya, Baghpat, Ballia, Balrampur, Banda, Basti, Bahraich, Bhadohi, Bijnor, Chandauli, Chitrakoot, Deoria, Etah, Fatehpur, Ghazipur, Gonda, Hamirpur, Hapur, Hardoi, Hathras, Kaushambhi, Lalitpur, Mahoba, Muzaffarnagar, Pilibhit, Rampur, Shamli, Siddharth Nagar and Sonbhadra.
The count of active cases in the state dipped as only 16 new cases were detected, while 28 patients recovered in the past 24 hours. The total number of cases in Uttar Pradesh since the outbreak in 2020 reached 17.09 lakh and the recoveries rose to 16.86 lakh.
No death was reported in the last 24 hours, and the Covid toll in the state remained static at 22,863.
(With inputs from IANS)
