India's COVID-19 tally crosses 19 mln, with over 400,000 daily cases

NEW DELHI - India's COVID-19 tally reached 19,164,969 on Saturday, with a single day spike of 401,993 cases, the health ministry said.

This is the first time when over 400,000 new cases were recorded in India in 24 hours, and a record number of 3,523 deaths since Friday morning took the total death toll to 211,853.

There are still a total of 3,268,710 active cases in the country, with an increase of 98,482 active cases through Friday, as 15,684,406 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals so far across the country.

The COVID-19 figures continue to peak in the country, but the federal government has ruled out imposing a complete lockdown. The capital Delhi has been put under a second successive week-long lockdown till May 3.

The number of daily active cases has been on the rise over the past few weeks, after once coming down to below 10,000 in January.

Over 154 million vaccination doses (154,989,635) have been administered to the people in India.

Online registration began on Wednesday for vaccinating people aged above 18. This would be the third phase of COVID-19 vaccination, which begins on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Indian government has ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities across the country, as over 288 million tests have been conducted so far.

As many as 288,337,385 tests have been conducted till Friday, out of which 1,945,299 tests were conducted on Friday alone, said the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research on Saturday.

The national capital Delhi, which has been one of the most COVID-19 affected places in the country, witnessed over 27,000 new cases and 375 deaths through Thursday.

So far as many as 16,147 people have died in the capital due to COVID-19, confirmed Delhi's health department.

India is set to receive its first doses of Sputnik-V, the Russian-made vaccine, on Saturday.