India records steepest hike in COVID-19 cases

NEW DELHI: India, on June 24, registered 16,922 new COVID-19 positive cases, the highest single day surge that pushed the nationwide tally to 4,73,105. The death toll climbed to 14,894 with 418 new fatalities.

According to Union Health Ministry, the number of active cases in the country are 1,86,514 while 2,71,696 people have recovered, and one patient has migrated, thus the recovery rate went up to 57.43% from 56.71%. Of the total 4.4 lakh Covid-19 cases reported in the country, only 15.34 per cent required ICU care and 4.16 per cent of patients were put on ventilators. They added that in the past three days, the doubling time of coronavirus infection cases has improved from 17.4 days on June 12 to 19.7 days.

The country had reported the biggest single day surge of nearly 16,000 cases on Wednesday.

Delhi, being the second worst hit state in terms of coronavirus caseload and deaths surpassed Mumbai after the number of cases increased by 3,788 to touch 70,390. As per official figures Mumbai has so far recorded 69,625 cases.

In total there are 12 states now that reported for more than 10,000 coronavirus cases as they continued to record daily spikes that were mainly attributed to increased testing.

Meanwhile, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), validated 1,000th testing laboratory on Wednesday, to increase the capacity for detection of Covid-19 in the country.