India's daily coronavirus disease (Covid-19) rose sharply on Thursday with 317,532 cases registered in the last 24 hours, which pushed the caseload to 38,218,773, according to the Union health ministry's data.
Fresh deaths also surged to 491 while 223,990 more patients recuperated from the viral disease on Thursday. With this, the total number of deaths and recoveries has climbed to 487,693 and 35,807,029 respectively. The active cases are nearing the two million mark and currently constitute 4.83% of total cases.
Thursday's case count has been the highest in 249 days, the health ministry said.
On Wednesday, the country registered nearly 283,000 fresh cases, 441 deaths and 188,157 recoveries.
The total number of tests carried out in the country is over 700 million with 1,935,180 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Thursday.
The country's Omicron count is nearing 10,000 with 9,287 cases of the fast-spreading variant detected so far, an increase of 3.63% since Wednesday.
Authorities have administered more than 7.33 million vaccine doses to eligible beneficiaries in the last 24 hours, and the cumulative vaccination coverage is nearing 1.6 billion.
{{/usCountry}}Authorities have administered more than 7.33 million vaccine doses to eligible beneficiaries in the last 24 hours, and the cumulative vaccination coverage is nearing 1.6 billion.
{{/usCountry}}The health ministry added that more than 1.58 billion vaccine doses have been provided to states and Union Territories (UTs) so far through the Centre's free of cost channel and direct state procurement category.
“More than 127.2 million balance and unutilized Covid vaccine doses are still available with the States/UTs to be administered,” the ministry added.
The third wave of Covid-19 in the country might peak on Sunday as the daily cases will be less than 400,000-mark. According to a study by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, “The daily peak cases are projected to peak on January 23 in India and stay below the 400,000-mark. Metro cities Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata have already peaked.”