India's COVID-19 tally surpasses 7 million

NEW DELHI - India on Sunday became the second country globally, after the United States, to have over 7 million COVID-19 cases.

With 74,383 new COVID-19 cases identified between Saturday and Sunday morning, the total tally reached 7,053,806, confirmed the federal health ministry.

According to the ministry's latest official data, as many as 918 deaths in the past 24 hours took the total death toll to 108,334.

The last 1 million COVID-19 cases were added to the tally in the past 13 days, while the previous 1 million cases were added in 12 days.

Still there are 867,496 active COVID-19 cases across the country, while 6,077,976 people were successfully cured and discharged from hospitals.

The country's south-western state of Maharashtra is the worst-affected with as many as 40,040 deaths and 1,255,779 cases so far. Still there are 221,615 active cases in the state, according to the federal health ministry's data.

It is followed by the southern state of Tamil Nadu which has recorded 10,187 deaths and a total of 597,033 cases, and the southern state of Karnataka which has 9,891 deaths due to the pandemic and 569,947 cases so far.

Meanwhile, the federal health ministry claims that India sustains the trend of consistently declining active cases, as the active caseload remained below 900,000 for the third consecutive day on Sunday.

Since Saturday the number of active COVID-19 cases came down by around 15,689.

Presently the active cases comprise 12.30 percent of the total positive cases of the country.

The total recovered cases in the country is 86.17 percent, as the number of recovered cases surpassed the 6-million mark on Sunday, reaching 6,077,976.

"With increasing recoveries, India has sustained its leading global position with the maximum recovered cases," the federal health ministry said, adding that the five worst-affected states with the maximum caseload (61 percent of the active cases) were also contributing more than half (54.3 percent) of the Total Recoveries.

Of the new recovered cases, 80 percent are being reported from 10 states, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Delhi and Chhattisgarh.

Maharashtra, the worst affected state, also leads the tally with nearly 26,500 new cases of recovered patients.

Almost 84 percent of the total deaths in the country are reported from 10 states. With 308 deaths, Maharashtra accounts for 33 percent of deaths reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Karnataka with 102 deaths, revealed the federal health ministry's data.

For over two months India's focus has been on ramping up the COVID-19 testing facilities. According to the latest data from the Indian Council of Medical Research, as many as 86,877,242 tests were conducted till Saturday, out of which 1,078,544 tests were conducted on Saturday alone.

It is believed that the cases might see another upward trend as the festive season begins this weekend. English daily "Hindustan Times" on Sunday quoted some experts as saying that with the festive season coming up the curve may rise once again if the people let their guard down.

Another English daily "The Times of India" quoted Delhi's Health Minister Satyendra Jain as saying that the state government would make necessary preparations to tackle the expected post-festival surge in COVID-19 cases.