More than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to co-morbidities, Health Ministry has said
India's COVID-19 tally inched closer to the 70-lakh mark as the country reported 73,272 new cases of coronavirus and 926 deaths in the last 24 hours, shows the Health Ministry data released this morning. A total of 82,753 people also successfully fought off the viral disease and were discharged in this period. India's recovery rate increased marginally to 85.8 per cent, death rate stood steady at 1.5 per cent and daily positivity rate increased marginally to 6.3 per cent as more than 11.6 lakh tests were conducted in the last 24 hours. As per the government's "test, track and treat" policy more than 8.5 crore tests have been conducted in India till now, the Health Ministry tweeted.
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According to the government figures, total coronavirus cases in India now stand at 69,79,424 including 8,83,185 active cases, 59,88,823 recovered or discharged patients and 1,07,416 deaths.
Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said India's rising recovery rate and progressively falling active cases have proven the success of the Centre-led COVID-19 containment strategy. The number of active cases in the country now account for 12.6 per cent of its tally.
Yesterday was the first time since September 9, when the number of active cases dropped to under 9 lakh. "This decline has been possible due to decrease in number of active cases in 20 states and Union Territories over the last month," the Health Ministry has tweeted.
India added record Covid cases in the month of September. India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 40-lakh mark on September 5. It went past 50 lakh on September 16 and crossed 60 lakh on September 28.
Maharashtra's COVID-19 tally crossed the 15 lakh-mark with the addition of 12,134 cases. The state worst hit by the pandemic reported 302 deaths, while 17,323 patients were discharged from hospitals. More than 12 lakh people have successfully fought off the disease till now, while 39,732 have succumbed to it.
The 926 new fatalities include 302 from Maharashtra, 114 from Karnataka, 68 from Tamil Nadu, 62 from West Bengal, 48 from Uttar Pradesh, 39 from Delhi, 38 from Chhattisgarh, 32 from Punjab, 31 from Andhra Pradesh.
The national health body, NCDC, has revised strategy for COVID-19 control in Delhi and recommended rationalising contact-tracing after workplaces in the city started emerging as hotspots. The report also recommended all symptomatic positive cases reported from densely populated areas should be isolated only in COVID Care Centres.
India remains the second worst hit country by coronavirus after the US which has more than 76.6 lakh cases with 2.13 lakh deaths, according to the John Hopkins University, which has been tracking the pandemic's progress across the world since its outbreak in China last December.
China has refuted the widely-held view that the deadly contagion originated in Wuhan before turning out to be a pandemic. On Friday, it claimed that the coronavirus broke out in the various parts of the world last year but it was the only one to have reported and acted first.
As the pandemic continues unabated in the absence of a vaccine, software giant Microsoft has said it will let employees work from home permanently if they choose to - becoming the latest employer to expand work-from-home provisions prompted by COVID-19. "The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged all of us to think, live and work in new ways," Microsoft's Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan said.
