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India Sees Highest Daily Rise In Covid Cases In Nearly Two Months

India’s daily Covid numbers jumped by over four per cent from yesterday as the country reported 46,759 new cases on Saturday. About 509 deaths were recorded during the past 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry.

Over 62.29 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far under the nationwide vaccination drive. On Friday, India set a new milestone with over 1 crore doses being administered to beneficiaries.

On Twitter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the people for making the immunisation exercise a success. "Record vaccination numbers today! Crossing 1 crore is a momentous feat. Kudos to those getting vaccinated and those making the vaccination drive a success," he tweeted.

Meanwhile, Kerala contributed 32,801 cases in the past 24 hours to take the total number of those affected in the state by the viral infection to 38,14,305. The southern state has been reporting over 30,000 cases for three days now.

Maharashtra, the worst-hit state in the country, reported 4,654 new infections and 170 fatalities in 24 hours.

No virus-related death were recorded in Delhi on Friday, while 46 fresh cases were reported with a positivity rate of 0.06 per cent, according to the city’s health department. This is the 17th time since the starting of the second wave of the pandemic in the national capital that zero fatality has been logged in a day.

With the positivity rate in the national capital at 0.1 per cent, the Delhi government has decided to open schools in the city from September 1. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, however, said that students will need parents’ permission and no one will be forced to attend the classes thanks to a hybrid system.

The daily positivity rate remains less than 3 per cent for the last 28 days and is presently at 2.19 per cent. Active cases constitute 1.10% of total cases, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate stands 97.56 per cent, the Union Health Ministry said.

The Delta variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 doubles the risk of hospitalisation compared to the Alpha variant it has supplanted as the dominant strain worldwide, according to a research. Only 1.8 percent of the more than 43,000 Covid cases assessed in comparing the two variants were in patients who had been fully vaccinated, researchers in The Lancet said.

The number of coronavirus patients in US hospitals breached 100,000 on Thursday, the highest level in eight months, as a resurgence of COVID-19 spurred by the highly contagious Delta variant strains the nation’s health care system. US COVID-19 hospitalizations have more than doubled in the past month.

Coronavirus cases worldwide have surpassed the 200 million-mark. Cases are rising in about one-third of the world’s countries, many of which have not even given half their population a first dose.