Less than 600 Covid-19 deaths in 24 hours for first time in 3 months: Health ministry

The Union health ministry’s dashboard on Monday showed there were 579 deaths in India in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 114,610. Ten states and Union territories added 83% of these deaths, it showed.

Updated on: Oct 19, 2020, 15:51:56 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Anonymous

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With 579 deaths due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) recorded in India in the last 24 hours, the Union health ministry on Monday highlighted this was the first time in nearly three months the country had logged less than 600 fatalities in a day. Of these 579 deaths, nearly one-fourth or 25.90% were in Maharashtra, a graph shared by the health ministry on its official Twitter handle showed.

A health worker collects swab samples for coronavirus tests, at Sector 30 District Hospital, in Noida, India (Photo by Sunil Ghosh / Hindustan Times)

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“579 case fatalities have been reported in the past 24 hours. After 90 days, the daily deaths recorded are below 600. Of these, nearly 83% are concentrated in ten states/UTs,” the ministry tweeted.

Maharashtra reported the highest number of deaths, at 150, way ahead of West Bengal (64), Tamil Nadu (56), Karnataka (51), Chhattisgarh (39), Uttar Pradesh (29), Delhi (28), Andhra Pradesh (23), Kerala (22) and Madhya Pradesh (20), the graph attached with the said tweet showed.

The country’s death toll has risen to 114,610 in the last 24 hours, the health ministry’s dashboard showed on Monday. However, fatalities constitute just 1.52% of India’s total number of cases-7,550,273.

Also, in this period, there were 66,399 recoveries, higher than the number of new positive cases--55,722--taking the overall recoveries to 6,663,608 or 88.26% of the total cases. Ten states and Union territories recorded 79% of the new recovered cases, with Maharashtra recording the highest number of recoveries at 11,204, the ministry said.

Total active cases, meanwhile, are at 772,055, staying below the 800,000 mark for the third straight day, the ministry further said. These constitute 10.23% of the country’s total Covid-19 tally, it added.