New Delhi: India reported just over 22,000 new Covid-19 cases over 24 hours Tuesday. This is the lowest number of daily cases detected since July. Lesser number of cases was accompanied by a dip in the positivity rate to 2.2 per cent.
In contrast, when daily cases were this low in July, the test positivity rate for India stood at over 10 per cent.
Daily cases
In the last 24 hours, 22,065 people have tested positive for Covid-19 across the country. This is the lowest number of new cases detected in a single day since 2 July.
Active cases
The active Covid-19 cases in the country fell to 3,39,820 Tuesday. The last time active cases in India were this low was on 17 July, when 10,03,832 cases of coronavirus infections were confirmed, of which 3,42,473 were active cases.
Number of deaths
As many as 354 Covid-19 deaths were reported from across the country in the last 24 hours, bringing the coronavirus death toll to 1,43,709 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Mortality rate
Punjab’s case fatality rate (CFR), which is already the highest in the country, rose to 3.17 Tuesday. However, the number of active cases in the state has now declined to under 7,000.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra — the state with the highest number of Covid-19 deaths — has the second highest CFR of 2.56.
Sikkim follows Maharashtra, with a CFR of 2.20, although the state has not reported any deaths since 11 December. India’s overall case fatality rate is now 1.45.
Daily tests
The number of Covid-19 tests carried out across 1,194 government and 1,054 private laboratories, increased to 9,93,665 Tuesday.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, a total of 15,55,60,655 Covid-19 tests have been carried out.
Positivity rate
The five-month low in daily Covid-19 cases Tuesday was accompanied by a significant dip in the test positivity rate (TPR). Tuesday’s TPR stood at 2.2 per cent, the lowest since June, when ThePrint started its daily Covid-19 tracker.
Recovered cases
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 94,22,636 people in India have recovered from Covid-19 infection, bringing India’s recovery rate to 95.12 per cent.
In the last 24 hours, 34,477 Covid-19 patients have been discharged.
Total cases
The total number of Covid-19 cases detected in India reached 99,06,165 Tuesday. This accounts for 13.5 per cent of the total coronavirus cases detected across the world. India has had the second largest number of coronavirus cases globally, second only to the US.
States with the highest active cases
Maharashtra has the highest number of active cases in the country, although the number is slowly declining. On Tuesday, active Covid-19 cases in the state stood at 73,481.
As many as 2,949 people tested positive for Covid-19 in the state in the last 24 hours. This brings the total number of cases detected in the state to 18,83,365.
With 60 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the state’s death toll stands at 48,269.
In Kerala, 2,707 people tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, which brought the total number of cases in the state, since the beginning of the pandemic, to 6,72,037.
Active cases in the state declined to 57,790 Tuesday, but the state still has second-highest number of active cases.
So far, 2,647 patients have succumbed to the infection in the state, with 24 deaths reported in the last 24 hours.
West Bengal’s active caseload fell to 21,384 Tuesday, the third-highest in the country. In the last 24 hours, 1,834 cases were detected, which brought the total number of cases in the state to 5,23,629.
As many as 43 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, taking the state’s death toll to 9,100.
Chhattisgarh, which had been witnessing a sustained increase in the number of Covid-19 cases till Monday, saw its active caseload fall to 18,931 Tuesday.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 2,58,635 people have been infected with Covid-19 in the state, of which 3,116 people have died.
In the last 24 hours, 1,615 people have tested positive for the disease, while 19 people in the state have lost their lives.
In Uttar Pradesh, as many as 1,172 people tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases detected in the state to 5,66,728.
Of these, 18,918 are active cases while 8,083 people have succumbed to Covid-19.