India added 10,549 new coronavirus cases and 488 fatalities in the last 24 hours, pushing the country's cumulative cases to 3,45,55,431 while the death count climbed to 4,67,468, the health ministry said today.
Active cases in India now stand at 1,10,133, the lowest in 539 days, and comprises 0.32 per cent of total infections. The national recovery rate stands at 98.33 per cent, the highest since March 2020.
The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been below 20,000 for 49 straight days and less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported for 152 consecutive days now.
India has administered over 120 crore Covid vaccine doses till date.
However, several nations worldwide including India have expressed concern amid reports of a new Covid variant surfacing. Identified first in South Africa and already spreading to its neighbouring countries including Botswana, this variant has now been detected across the globe in Hong Kong and Israel as well, and is said to be much more infectious than the Delta variant, the "most heavily mutated" version of coronavirus discovered so far.
In response, several countries including the UK, Singapore, US and the EU have banned travel from southern Africa, as the World Health Organisation named the new variant "Omicron" a "variant of concern".