COVID cases surge past 60 lakh in India, over 82K new cases, 1039 deaths

The total COVID-19 cases in India has crossed the 60-lakh mark with 82,170 new coronavirus cases and 1,039 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, says the Health Ministry data released on September 28.

With 74,893 more people having recovered, the number of total recoveries crossed the 50 lakh mark to stand at 50,16,520. As many as 95,542 people have lost their lives to COVID-19. More than 1,000 people a day have died due to the deadly virus since September 2. The country now has 9.62 lakh active cases.

India is the second worst-hit country by the pandemic, second only to the US which has more than 71 lakh cases. Global coronavirus infections have spiraled to 3.3 crore.

COVID-19 has claimed the lives of more than 10 lakh people across the world. The WHO has warned that the global death count could more than double to two million before an effective vaccine is ready for mass use, and could be even higher without concerted action.

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The national daily positivity rate (or the percentage of tests that are positive) has doubled to 11.58 per cent from Saturday’s 6.3 per cent as the Health Ministry conducted 7,09,394 COVID-detection tests in the last 24 hours. Till now, the country has conducted more than 7 crore tests.

The national mortality rate stands at 1.57 per cent.

Kerala and the four worst-hit states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu reported the highest one-day rise in the past 24 hours. These five states together reported 47,758 or around 58 per cent of all new cases.

Maharashtra continues to report maximum corona fatalities in the country with 380 deaths. West Bengal replaced Andhra Pradesh in the list of the country’s top five states with highest deaths. These states, along with Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, together recorded 676 deaths or 65 per cent of all deaths in the country.

On the cases of re-infection, Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said the Indian population is far from achieving herd immunity against COVID-19 as shown by ICMR’s second Sero Survey. Several cases of Covid re-infection, especially among doctors, have been reported from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Assam.