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With 60,74,703 total coronavirus cases, India is the second worst-affected country, second only to the United States which has more than 71 lakh cases. Global coronavirus infections have soared past 3.3 crore.
COVID-19, which broke out in China's Wuhan less than a year ago, has claimed the lives of more than 10 lakh people across the world. The World Health Organization has warned that the global death count could more than double to two million before a successful vaccine is widely used - and could be even higher without concerted action to curb the pandemic.
The national daily positivity rate (or the percentage of tests that are positive) has doubled to 11.58 per cent from Saturday's 6.3 per cent as the Health Ministry conducted 7,09,394 Covid-detection tests in the last 24 hours. Till now, the country has conducted more than 7 crore tests (7,19,67,230).
The overall recovery rate has inched up to 82.58 per cent. The national mortality rate stands at 1.57 per cent; more than 1,000 people a day have died due to coronavirus since September 2.
Kerala and the four worst-hit states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu reported the highest one-day increases among states in the past 24 hours. Together these five states reported 47,758 or around 58 per cent of all new cases.
While Maharashtra - which has reported 13.30 lakh cases till now - recorded 18,056 new cases in the last 24 hours, Karnataka and Kerala reported more than 9,000 and 7,000 cases for a second day. Andhra Pradesh's new cases dipped marginally to 6,923, and Tamil Nadu's stood at 5,791.
Maharashtra continued to report the maximum Covid fatalities in the country with 380 deaths. West Bengal replaced Andhra Pradesh in the list of country's top five states with highest deaths. These states, along with Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, together recorded 676 deaths or 65 per cent of all deaths in the country.
Stressing on the cases of re-infection Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said the Indian population is still far from achieving herd immunity against COVID-19 as shown by ICMR's second Sero Survey. Several cases of Covid re-infection, especially among doctors, have been reported from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Assam sparking worry.
Even as the number of coronavirus cases in Assam continue to increase, there has been a 50 per cent fall in the number of cases of Japanese Encephalitis - a potentially fatal mosquito-borne disease that can cause inflammation of the brain and leave the patient in a coma or with paralysis. However, with heavy rain for the last few days, Assam is experiencing its third wave of flood this year.
Election activity has restarted in the country amid the pandemic with mandatory wearing of face mask and social distancing at polling booths in Rajasthan. Polling for the first phase of election of the sarpanch and panch in 947 gram panchayats started today morning. In total, 3,848 gram panchayats will go to polls in the state in four phases ending October 10.
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