Yet again, India has surpassed its daily record of new COVID-19 cases.
Thursday saw the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare report 52,123 new COVID-19 cases in the preceding 24 hours. This marks the first time that more than 50,000 new cases were reported in a single day. The 52,123 new cases were accompanied by 775 new deaths. This, according to Union Health Ministry data, takes the confirmed cases of COVID-19 in India to 1,583,792 and the number of fatalities to 34,968. This is as of 8 a.m. on Thursday morning.
Worldometer data puts India’s number of cases of COVID-19 – the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or, simply, coronavirus – higher. At the time of writing, Worldometer reports that India has confirmed 1,590,297 cases of the disease thus far with 35,048 fatalities.
On a positive note, India has now recorded more than ten lakh (one million) recoveries from COVID-19 according to the Union Health Ministry. Citing a recovery rate of 64.44 percent, the Union Health Ministry identified 528,242 active COVID-19 cases in the country. Worldometer reports an active case count of 531,438, with 1,023,811 people having recovered – the figures being roughly congruent.
Testing forms an integral component of India’s response to COVID-19. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has said that, as of July 29th, the country has tested 18,190,382 samples for COVID-19. Wednesday alone saw 446,642 samples tested. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the Government intended to scale up its testing capacity to ten lakh samples a day.
At the global level, Worldometer reports that 17,218,757 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed thus far. Of these, 5,817,829 are active. Of the patients currently infected with COVID-19, 99 percent – denoting 5,751,446 people – are in mild condition. The remaining one percent of patients – denoting 66,383 people – are in serious or critical condition.
Fortunately, 10,729,972 people worldwide have recovered from COVID-19. Sadly, 670,956 people have died.
