India's Covid-19 tally crosses 20 lakh-mark as Maharashtra, Karnataka report highest single-day spike in cases

India on Thursday crossed the grim landmark of 20 lakh Covid-19 cases, with Maharashtra and Karnataka reporting the highest single-day spikes in infections yet.

However, the actual case load – or patients under active medical supervision – was just over six lakh as 13.5 lakh persons had been cured and discharged from healthcare facilities.

According to a DH Covid-19 Tracker, India has 20,21,275 cases at 10:00 pm on Thursday, while the total deaths reported were 41,580. India has been adding more than 50,000 cases for the past nine days and a cumulative five lakh new cases since July 28.

On the brighter side though, the recovery rate has been increasing steadily for the past week with Wednesday reporting the highest ever discharges of – 51,706 – patients from healthcare centres.

“The recovery rate has continued its upward journey to reach another record high of 67.62% amongst Covid-19 patients,” a health ministry official said.

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Health Minister Harsh Vardhan told a meeting of his counterparts from the south east Asian region that the containment strategy to check the spread of the virus has been successful in India.

He said 50% of the total cases in India were from three states and another 32% were from seven states.

“The spread of the virus thus has been contained,” the minister said at the virtual meeting organised by the WHO Regional Director for South East Asia.

Maharashtra reported the most number of new cases – 11,514 on Thursday followed by Karnataka (6,805) and Tamil Nadu (5,684).

India also stepped up testing for Covid-19 as it tested more than six lakh samples for the third consecutive day on Wednesday. The ICMR, through its network of 1,370 laboratories, had tested 6,64,949 samples for Covid-19 on Wednesday.

“The cumulative testing as on date has reached 2,21,49,351. The Tests Per Million too have seen a sharp rise to 16,050,” the health ministry said.