India recorded marginal drop in Covid cases on Tuesday with 1,259 fresh infections (as compared to 1,270 cases on Monday), pushing the caseload to 4,30,21,982, according to the health ministry dashboard. Thirty-five patients died and the overall toll in the country has climbed to 5,21,070. The active cases in the country further declined to 15,378 and constitute 0.04% of the caseload.
The overall recoveries, meanwhile, are nearing 4.25 crore-mark after 1,705 patients were discharged in the last 24 hours. The overall Covid-19 recovery rate stands at 98.75%. The daily and weekly positivity rates stand at 0.22% and 0.25% respectively, the ministry said on Tuesday.
More than 5.77 lakh samples were tested for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours and the cumulative testing figure is nearing 79 crore, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Tuesday. The Covid-19 situation in India has been improving for the past several weeks, but the surge in daily infections in other countries might pose a risk since the Centre resumed international flights on Sunday, after a gap of two years.
Before the resumption of international flights, the civil aviation ministry relaxed some pandemic-related restrictions. These included allowing cabin crew members to work without wearing PPE kits, allowing security personnel at airports to resume the pat-down search of passengers, and removing the requirement to keep three seats vacant on international flights for medical emergencies.
Meanwhile, the country’s vaccination coverage has exceeded 183.49 crore with nearly 23 lakh doses administered to eligible beneficiaries in the last 24 hours.
Of the total vaccines administered, over 1.35 crore doses were given to children in the 12-14 age group and 2.27 crore beneficiaries including healthcare workers, frontline workers and people above 60 have been inoculated with the precautionary dose.