COVID-19: India reports lowest daily cases after gap of nearly 6 months

New Delhi: India registered 18,732 fresh cases of COVID-19, the lowest in nearly six months, while 97,61,538 people have recuperated so far from the disease pushing the national recovery rate to 95.82 per cent, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Sunday.

The death toll climbed to 1,47,622 with the novel Coronavirus virus claiming 279 lives in a span of 24 hours in the country, the data updated at 8 am showed.

A total of 18,732 daily new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours. The number of new daily cases last reported a dip on July 1 when 18,653 cases were registered.

The COVID-19 case fatality rate was registered at 1.44 per cent.

There are 2,78,690 active cases of Coronavirus infection in the country which comprises 2.73 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.

According to the ICMR, a cumulative total of 16,81,02,657 samples have been tested up to December 26 with 9,43,368 samples being tested on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the winter session of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, which was scheduled to begin on December 28, has been postponed in view of the "COVID-19 situation". Earlier on Sunday, protem speaker disclosed that 61 employees and officials of the Assembly secretariat and five MLAs have tested Coronavirus positive.