41,965 Fresh COVID-19 Cases In India, 35.6% Higher Than Yesterday

The daily test positivity rate - number of positive cases identified per 100 - stands at 2.61 per cent.

With 30,203 cases, Kerala leads the states with most number of daily Covid cases. It also reported 115 Covid deaths. Tamil Nadu with 1,512 Covid cases, Karnataka with 1,217, Andhra Pradesh with 1,115 are other states with a high number of daily cases. Telangana reported 338 cases in a day.

Rajasthan (with 2 Covid cases), Bihar (8), Madhya Pradesh (10), Gujarat (12) - the four big states - reported zero Covid deaths. Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh also reported zero Covid deaths.

With 1.33 crore doses in a day, India achieved a new vaccination milestone on Tuesday. In total, over 65 crore doses have been administered so far in the country. The nation had achieved the one-crore doses milestone for the first time on August 27.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday raised concern over crowds assembling at public places in Mumbai and said if it was not controlled or restricted, the city would face a similar situation as earlier this year when the number of COVID-19 cases surged, leading to the second wave of the pandemic.

The increasing number of COVID-19 infections in some states presently is indicating a third wave, said Dr Samiran Panda, the top medical body ICMR's Head of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases. Dr Panda said the country needs a state-specific view when talking about COVID-19 because all the states are not homogenous.

A stampede at a vaccination centre in West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district left around 20 people injured on Tuesday even as the state vaccinated a record 11 lakh people against COVID-19. Hundreds of people crowded at the centre gates since the crack of dawn from nearby villages and tea gardens. Eyewitnesses said around 2,000 people had gathered near the centre and there was hardly any police deployment in the area.

Some states where schools have opened amid concerns about a third wave of the Covid pandemic, are seeing a rise in infections among children. The cases in point are in six states - Punjab, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand. In Jharkhand and Chandigarh, though, the trend is opposite.

India's gross domestic product (GDP) showed an impressive growth as it shot up to record a 20.1 per cent rise in the April-June period or the first quarter of 2021-22. The growth is a remarkable recovery from the negative growth which was witnessed during the corresponding period of last fiscal when it was a dismal -24.4 per cent, mainly due to coronavirus forced lockdowns.

A new variant of S-CoV-2, the virus which cause COVID-19, has been detected in South Africa and many other countries globally which could be more transmissible and evade protection provided by vaccines, according to a study. The new variant has more mutations than other variants of concern (VOCs) or variants of interest (VOIs) detected worldwide so far, the researchers said.