India continued to set new records when it comes to COVID-19, surpassing Brazil to reclaim the second spot among nations with the maximum number of cases. At the same time, the country also recorded an all-time high single-day case load of nearly 1.69 lakh patients. With this, the total number of active cases has now crossed 12 lakh.
Data from the live tracker maintained by John Hopkins University indicates that while the US continues to lead the ranks with more than 31,197,500 cases till date, India has now overtaken Brazil to rank a distant second. France and Russia round out the top five.
As per Health Ministry data, India reported 1,68,912 new COVID-19 cases, 75,086 discharges and 904 deaths in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra continues to be the worst affected state clocking more than a third of the new cases, followed by Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.
In the meantime, India has administered 10,45,28,565 COVID-19 vaccines as of Monday morning. As per an update shared by the Health Ministry, 1.29 crore individuals have received the second dose of the vaccines. The Indian government has recently ramped up inoculation efforts, initiating a Tika Utsav.
"On Day 1 of Tika Utsav, more than 27 lakh vaccine doses were administered, till 8 pm. Sunday generally witnessed lower vaccination numbers (about 16 lakh on an average)," the Ministry tweeted on Sunday evening.
The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 with healthcare workers (HCWs) getting inoculated and vaccination of frontline workers (FLWs) started from February 2. The next phase of COVID-19 vaccination commenced from March 1 for those over 60 years of age and for people aged 45 and above with specified co-morbid conditions. India launched vaccination for all people aged more than 45 from April 1.
(With inputs from agencies)
