Continuing its daily surge of Covid-19 cases, India reported 2,71,202 fresh infections on Sunday, with 314 more succumbing to the virus, government data showed.
The country saw 1,702 new cases of Omicron variant, the highest in a single day so far, and an increase of 28.17 per cent since Saturday.
According to experts, it is not possible to undertake genome sequencing of each and every sample, but stressed that this wave is largely being driven by Omicron.
India now has 15,50,377 active cases, the highest in 225 days, while the death toll is at 4,86,066. The positivity rate declined from 16.66 per cent on Saturday to 16.28 per cent on Sunday.
A total of 70,24,48,838 samples were tested up to January 15 of which 16,65,404 samples were tested on January 15. Meanwhile, 1,56,76,15,454 have been vaccinated so far under the national immunisation drive.
The active cases comprises 4.18 per cent of the total infections, while the national Covid-19 recovery rate has decreased to 94.51 per cent, the ministry said.
An increase of 1,32,557 cases has been recorded in the active Covid-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.
India's Covid-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.
India crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crore on June 23.
(With PTI inputs)
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