India saw a marginal increase in its daily Covid tally with as many as 1,150 people testing positive in the last 24 hours, the latest health ministry data showed on Saturday. This is for the fourth straight day when the country logged more than 1,000 fresh Covid-19 cases. On Wednesday and Thursday, there were 1,086 and 1,033 fresh infections respectively. India reported 1,109 new cases on Friday.
As per the data shared by the health ministry, the number of active cases fell to 11,365 or 0.03 per cent of the total cases logged so far. Over the last 24 hours, 83 Covid-linked deaths were registered, taking the total number of lives lost to around 5,21,656 since the start of the pandemic. The daily positivity rate stood at 0.25 per cent and the weekly positivity rate was at 0.23 per cent on Saturday.
Fourteen lakh vaccine doses were administered in the last 24 hours, of which 6.42 lakh doses were given to children between 12-14 age group. Over 1.40 lakh booster vaccine doses were also administered in the last 24 hours.
The Covid booster dose will now be available to the 18+ population starting from Sunday amid the fear of the new ‘XE variant’. Till now, the precautionary third dose was limited to frontline workers and people over the age of 60. 185.55 crore vaccine doses have been given so far since the beginning of the Nationwide Vaccination Drive.
1,194 more people recovered in the latest update, taking the total number of such cases to 4,25,01,196. The recovery rate remains stable at 98.76 per cent.
Meanwhile, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Friday wrote to the authorities in Kerala, Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana and Mizoram over their higher contribution to India’s Covid-19 cases, reiterating the the need to follow the five-fold strategy of “test, track, treat, vaccination and adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour.”