India's coronavirus tally crosses 5 lakh-mark

India’s Covid-19 count on Friday crossed the grim landmark of five-lakh confirmed cases even as the government focused its efforts to control the spread of the disease in emerging hotspots such as Telangana.

India added one lakh infections within a span of seven days, reporting an increase of an average of 14,000 cases daily since it crossed the four-lakh mark on June 20.

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According to the Health Ministry, India added 17,296 fresh infections as of Friday morning, taking the total cases to 4,90,401, while the death toll climbed to 15,301.

According to a DH Covid-19 Tracker, India has 5,04,079 confirmed cases of Covid-19 at 8:30 p.m. on Friday– an intra-day increase of 13,678 cases. Maharashtra reported an intra-day increase of 5,025 new infections, an all time high so far.

Centre has dispatched a team of health ministry officials to Maharashtra, Gujarat and Telangana to assist the states in management of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Telangana has been adding an average of 875 new cases daily with active cases doubling every five days, the fastest in the country, while the total cases double up every seven days.

Assam, which has the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the Northeast region, announced a two-week lockdown in Guwahati from Monday after the state reported a sharp spike in infections over the past ten days.

According to the Health Ministry, the gap between patients under active medical supervision and those recovered from the disease is widening every passing day.

The recovered cases have exceeded the active cases by 96,173, a health ministry official said.

On the testing front, India had conducted 2,15,446 tests on Thursday through its network of 1,016 diagnostic laboratories. Cumulatively, India tested 77.76 lakh samples for Covid-19 since the outbreak was first reported in the country in January.