India’s fresh Covid tally below 3k-mark after a week with 2,288 new cases; 10 deaths in 24 hrs

India’s daily Covid-19 tally fell below the 3,000-mark on Tuesday after nearly a week. In the past 24 hours, the country reported 2,288 fresh cases – a dip of 919 cases in comparison to the previous day’s tally of 3,207 – taking the total number of infections recorded so far to 43,107,689, according to the Union health ministry’s latest data.

Ten deaths reported in the same time span took the toll since the start of the pandemic to 5,24,103.

Active cases now comprise 0.05 per cent of the total infections, the data further showed. The national recovery rate reached 98.74 per cent after 3,044 people recuperated from the viral disease in the same time span. This took the cumulative tally of recoveries to 4,25,63,949.

The total number of tests conducted the previous day to detect the Covid-19 infection stood at 4,84,843, the health ministry said. On the vaccination front, the total number of vaccines administered so far has reached 1,90,50,86,706, of which 13,90,912 were given on Monday.

Fresh infections began rising across the country, including Delhi and Maharashtra, a few days ago. The surge had come after cases had gone down following a period of spike between January to February, driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

However, the daily Covid tally has maintained a downward trend for the past two days, with infections now dropping below the 3000-mark.

The World Health Organisation’s recent report on excess deaths that went unreported globally made headlines as the report pegged the number of deaths in India associated with Covid-19 to 4.7 million – as against the government’s toll of 4,80,000. The government refuted the report and stated its objections to the use of “mathematical model” for projecting excess mortality estimates in view of the availability of authentic data.