About 47% Covid deaths in India have been of those under 60 years of age, the Centre said.
India's coronavirus tally surged to 73.7 lakh cases after a fresh spike of 63,371 COVID-19 infections in the last 24 hours, the government data showed this morning. The number of fatalities stood at 1,12,161 after 895 deaths were registered in a day. The death rate is 1.5 per cent. The number of deaths reported yesterday - 680 - were the lowest in two months. "India continues to have one of the lowest deaths per million population globally," the Health Ministry tweeted this morning. He also listed 22 states and union territories that are performing better and reporting much lower deaths/million population than the national average of 80 deaths per million.
Here are top 10 developments on coronavirus cases:
About 64.5 lakh patients in the country have so far recovered from the viral disease; 70,338 patients have fought off COVID-19 since yesterday pushing the country's recovery rate past 87.6 per cent.
India now has 8.04 lakh active cases and a daily positivity rate of 6.2 per cent as India conducted more than 10.2 lakh tests in the last 24 hours, and more than 9.2 crore tests on the whole till now.
Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh remained the five worst hit states with the highest number of cases in the last 24 hours. They accounted for 55 per cent of the country's fresh infections.
All these states, barring Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, also recorded the highest one-day Covid deaths - 579, or 64.6 per cent of all Covid fatalities in India in this period. As per government data, Maharashtra's deaths per day almost doubled to 337 yesterday.
As more and more scientists warn against managing COVID-19 by allowing herd immunity to develop in low-risk populations while protecting the most vulnerable, country's Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said India is expected to have a vaccine in a few months and the country should be in the process of delivering it to people in the next six months.
Till then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for continued vigilance and a high state of preparedness against the pandemic and directed health authorities to scale up COVID-19 testing and sero-surveys. He said the facility to get tested regularly and speedily at a low cost must be available to all at the earliest.
The government has been repeatedly emphasising on the need to wear masks and not venture into crowded places ahead of the winter months, when lung infections and diseases rise.
The country has also come up with a co-infection protocol that flags rising cases of COVID-19 patients also reporting malaria and dengue, besides other seasonal diseases.
India remains the second worst affected country in the world behind the Unites States, which has more than 80 lakh coronavirus cases and more than 2.2 lakh deaths.
Remdesivir, among the first antiviral medicines used to treat critically ill coronavirus patients, had little or no effect on COVID-19 patients' length of hospital stay or chances of survival, the World Health Organization has found as part of its "Solidarity" trial. It evaluated the effects of four potential drug regimens - remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, anti-HIV drug combination lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon.
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