India's daily COVID-19 caseload increased to 16,299 on Thursday, officials said.

August 11

 

According to federal health ministry data released on Thursday morning, 16,299 new cases of COVID-19 were reported during the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 44,206,996 in the country.

 

The cases reported on Thursday mark an increase in comparison to the daily caseload of 16,047 on Wednesday.

 

With the fresh cases, India's active caseload currently stands at 125,076.

 

The country also logged 53 related deaths during the past 24 hours, pushing the overall death toll to 526,879 since the beginning of the pandemic, the ministry said.

 

With the increase in cases, the daily positivity rate stands at 4.58 percent and the weekly positivity rate at 4.85 percent, the ministry data showed.

 

The ministry said so far 43,555,041 people have been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals, of whom 19,431 were discharged during the past 24 hours.

 

According to the federal health ministry, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the country has exceeded 2 billion doses and until Thursday morning 2,072,946,593 doses were administered.

 

So far over 879 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country.

 

A cumulative total of 879,233,251 samples have been tested up to Aug. 10, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said Thursday. Out of these 356,153 tests were conducted on Wednesday alone.

 

Health experts say COVID-19 is a cyclical disease and will come in waves.

 

A survey carried out by a digital community-based platform said 63 percent of people in Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) who participated in the exercise have said they did not undergo any test despite having COVID-19 like symptoms in the last 30 days. On Tuesday Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said COVID-19 cases were on the rise in the national capital but there was no need to panic as most new cases were mild in nature.

 

Last week India's federal health ministry wrote to seven states including the capital Delhi, asking them to ensure adequate testing, promote COVID-19 appropriate behaviour and increase the pace of vaccination to contain the ongoing increase in cases.

 

The letter warns that the upcoming festivals and mass congregations in different parts of the country may potentially facilitate the transmission of infectious diseases, including COVID-19.

 

The federal government stated in the Indian parliament that given the emergence of COVID-19 variants with variable transmissibility and other public health implications, the health ministry was closely following the COVID-19 trajectory globally and in the country.

 

xinhua