India's COVID-19 cases climb to 20,471; 652 dead

New Delhi: With 1,486 new cases in the last 24 hours, India on Wednesday reported a total of 20,471 confirmed cases, including 3,960 recoveries and 652 deaths.

With 700 new recoveries in a day out of the total cured patients, the country's recovery rate improved from 17.1 per cent to 19.3 per cent on Wednesday. There are 15,859 active cases in the country.

The total number of cases includes 77 foreign nationals who were tested positive in India.

Of the 49 deaths reported since Tuesday evening, 19 were from Maharashtra, 18 from Gujarat, four from Madhya Pradesh, three from West Bengal, two from Andhra Pradesh and one each from Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

According to the ministry, of the total 652 deaths, Maharashtra tops the tally with 251, followed by Gujarat at 95, Madhya Pradesh at 80, Delhi at 47, Rajasthan at 25, Andhra Pradesh at 24 and Telangana at 23.

The death toll reached 21 in Uttar Pradesh, 18 in Tamil Nadu while Karnataka reported 17 cases. Punjab has registered 16 deaths.

With 5,221 cases, Maharashtra has the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19. Gujarat, which has seen a spike in cases in the last few days, has replaced Delhi in the second place as the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi registered 2,272 cases, while Delhi has 2,156 COVID-19 cases in Delhi.

Despite the large number of cases being added in the last few days, the spread of the disease in India has slowed down considerably as a result of the lockdown. India took eight days to travel from 10,000 cases to 20,000 cases.

Before the impact of lockdown had become evident, the country was witnessing exponential growth in the number of cases. It had taken around two weeks to move from three cases at the start of March to 100 cases, another two weeks to reach 1000 cases and a little more than two weeks to touch the 10,000 figure.

At that rate, the country would have on its way to reaching one lakh cases by the end of the month. But thanks to the lockdown, and other measures taken by the government, all indications are that the total number of cases at the end of this month would be somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000.