India's daily Covid-19 cases crossed the 3-lakh mark on Thursday as the country reported 3,17,532 new infections, according to the Union Health Ministry data.
The active cases rose to 19,24,051, the highest in 234 days, while the death toll climbed to 4,87,693 with 491 fresh fatalities, the data updated at 8 am stated.
So far 9,287 cases of Omicron variant of coronavirus has been detected in India. There has been a 3.63 per cent increase in Omicron cases since Wednesday, the ministry said. Experts said it is not possible to undertake genome sequencing of each and every sample but stressed that the current wave is largely being driven by Omicron.
An increase of 93,051 cases has been recorded in the active Covid-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours. The active cases comprise 5.03 per cent of the total infections, while the national Covid-19 recovery rate has decreased to 93.09 per cent, the ministry said.
A total of 70,93,56,830 samples have been tested up to January 19, of which 19,35,180 were tested yesterday.
Meanwhile, the Department of Biotechnology has disbursed less than 15 per cent of its Rs 900 crore fund on Covid-19 vaccine development promised more than a year ago while multiple government research agencies say they haven’t received any funding from a Rs 100 crore corpus set up under the PMO during the first wave of the pandemic.
The Union Health Ministry, Indian Council of Medical Research and DBT said they didn’t receive any money from a Rs 100 crore PM-CARES (Citizens Assistance Relief in Emergency Situations) fund as announced by the government way back in May, 2020.
The Rs 100 crore fund for vaccine development was a part of a Rs 3,100 package under PM-CARES to purchase 50,000 ventilators and undertake relief measures for migrant workers, who were affected the most during the lockdown period.
The country had reported 3,11,170 cases in a single day on May 15 last year.
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 inputs from PTI)
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