India sees 263,533 new Covid-19 cases, highest single-day death toll of 4,329

According to the Union ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) dashbaord on Tuesday morning, the country's infection tally has gone past the 25 million-mark and is currently at 25,228,996. The tally includes a related death toll of 278,719.

India registered 263,533 cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in the last 24 hours, taking the country’s infection tally to 25,228,996, the Union ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) dashboard showed on Tuesday morning. Also, in this period, 4,329 lives were lost to the viral disease, taking the related death toll to 278,719, the dashboard further showed. This is the highest single-day death toll in the country since the beginning of the pandemic.

A health worker conducts Covid-19 testing at Ram Manohar Lohiya Hospital in Lucknow (PTI).

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Though India registered a marginal rise in its new Covid-19 cases, it was for a second consecutive day that there were less than 300,000 cases. On Monday, the ministry’s dashboard showed that 281,386 people tested positive for Covid-19 in the preceding 24 hours, making it the first time in several days that India’s Covid-19 tally increased by less than 300,000 fresh infections from a single-day. However, the related daily death toll, which has oscillated between more than 4,000 fatalities per day to nearly 4,000 fatalities a day, was recorded at 4,106.

According to Tuesday's data, recovered cases have reached 21,596,512 with 422,436 additional discharges, while active cases are at 3,353,765, down by 163,232 from the previous bulletin. Recoveries, active cases and deaths together contribute 85.60%, 13.30% and 1.10% respectively of the national tally.

The number of samples tested in the last 24 hours also witnessed a rise, with 1,869,223 samples tested in this period, up from 1,573,515 from the 24-hour period before that, the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) tweeted on Tuesday. Total 318,292,881 samples have been tested till May 17, the ICMR data showed.

The relative fall in India’s daily cases of the coronavirus disease comes on the back of drop in cases in several states and Union territories (UTs), where curbs like lockdowns, mini-lockdowns, corona curfew etc. were imposed, or extended, to break the chain of transmission of the infection. Capital Delhi and the financial hub of Maharashtra, where a lockdown and lockdown-like curbs are in place, respectively, witnessed a rise of 4,524 and 26,616 infections on Monday, as per their health departments’ bulletins. This was for the first time since April 5 that Delhi’s daily count was less than 5,000, while Maharashtra has, in the past, logged a daily caseload of more than 60,000, which has undergone a steady fall in the last few days.

Later in the day on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a virtual interaction with officials from Karnataka, Bihar, Assam, Chandigarh, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Goa, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi to discuss the pandemic situation.