India tops Russia, now third worst-hit nation

New Delhi: According to the Health Ministry, India recorded over 20,000 new COVID-19 cases for the third day in a row. The country reported 24,850 fresh Coronavirus positives and 613 deaths in the last 24 hours.

With this, the total caseload climbed to 6,73,165. However, the Health Ministry officials have ruled out community transmission and stressed that COVID-19 is still in stage 2 in the country. Later on Sunday, according to covid19india.org, India surpassed Russia to become the third worst-hit nation, with the number of cases standing at 6,90,396. Russia has 6,81,251 cases.

As per Health Ministry officials, the country is reporting higher caseload in the recent past due to the increase in sample testing as at present above 2.40 lakh samples are being tested per day and the target is to scale it up to 3 lakh in a day.

Notably, with 14,856 new recoveries in 24 hours, total 4,09,083 patients have recovered to date bringing the recovery rate to 60.77 per cent. There are now 2,44,814 active cases in India while 19,268 have succumbed to the virus infection during the course of treatment.

Twenty-one states and UTs, including Delhi, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, have reported COVID-19 recovery rate higher than the national average.

Among the 21 states and UTs, Chandigarh has the highest recovery rate at 85.9 per cent as out of total 460 cases, 395 patients have cured, while 59 are active cases and six have succumbed to the virus.

Other UT, Ladakh has second-highest recovery rate at 82.2 per cent followed by Uttarakhand (80.9 per cent), Chhattisgarh (80.6 per cent), Rajasthan (80.1 per cent), Mizoram (79.3 per cent), Tripura (77.7 per cent) and Madhya Pradesh (76.9 per cent). Jharkhand has reported recoveries at 74.3 per cent, while its neighbouring state Bihar has a recovery rate of 74.2 per cent followed by Haryana (74.1 per cent), Gujarat (71.9 per cent), Punjab (70.5 per cent), Delhi (70.2 per cent), Meghalaya (69.4 per cent) and Odisha (69.0 per cent).

Other states/UTs like Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam and Jammu & Kashmir have recoveries at the rate of 68.4 per cent, 67.3 per cent, 66.7 per cent, 62.4 per cent and 62.4 per cent respectively.