Coronavirus Cases Updates: Over 1.19 crore people in the country have recovered.
India has set another record of daily Covid cases with 1,31,968 infections in the last 24 hours, pushing the total case count to over 1.3 crore. The surge, much steeper than last year's first wave, has forced many states have imposed tight curbs.
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This is the fourth time in five days when India reported over one lakh new cases. 1,67,642 people have died of COVID-19 in India, with 780 deaths in the last 24 hours. India is the third worst-hit country after the United States and Brazil.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his meeting with Chief Ministers yesterday, stressed on the need for creating micro-containment zones and extensive testing as a means to combat the second wave of the pandemic.
He said states should observe a "tika utsav", or ''vaccine festival'', between April 11 and 14 to inoculate the maximum number of eligible beneficiaries.
However, vaccine centres in several states, including hardest-hit Maharashtra, have been shutting early and turning people away as supplies run out.
Several districts in Maharashtra have stopped vaccinations completely as they have run out of vaccine doses. Mumbai and Navi Mumbai have shut more than 20 vaccination centres to cope with the shortage. The state's Home Minister has made an appeal to centre to ramp up vaccinations. Mumbai reported 8,938 new COVID-19 cases today, a drop from over 10,000 infections each on the previous two days.
In terms of the total caseload, Maharashtra is followed by the southern states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan yesterday dismissed as "farce" the "hue and cry" by certain states about partisanship by the Centre and called it an attempt to hide their own incompetence, saying non-BJP ruled Maharashtra and Rajasthan figured among the top three states based on allocation of vaccines.
A night curfew will be enforced in Bengaluru and six other cities in Karnataka from 10 pm to 5 am starting tomorrow, till April 20, Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa said yesterday. With 6,570 new cases, Karnataka's total caseload crossed 10.4 lakh.
Similarly, in Uttar Pradesh too, a night curfew is in place since yesterday in Noida, Allahabad, Meerut and Ghaziabad. In Bareilly, the night curfew will be imposed from today. The country's most populous state reported 39 more COVID-19 fatalities on Thursday pushing the toll to 9,003, while 8,490 new cases took the infection tally to 6,54,404
Delhi recorded 7,437 fresh cases of COVID-19 in highest single-day spike this year. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is among those who have demanded that the vaccination drive be opened to other age groups.
