India's daily Covid curve showed marginal improvement today as the country reported 3.37 lakh cases, which is around 2.7 per cent lower than yesterday. With a tally of 3.89 crore cases, India is the second worst-hit country after the US.
The top five states which have registered maximum cases are Maharashtra with 48,270 cases, followed by Karnataka with 48,049 cases, Kerala with 41,668 cases, Tamil Nadu with 29,870 cases and Gujarat with 21,225 cases.
Around 56.0 per cent of the new cases are reported from these five states, with Maharashtra alone responsible for 14.29% of the new cases.
A total of 488 deaths were reported in the country in the last 24 hours, increasing the total reported death count to 4,88,884.
The active cases have increased to 21,13,365, the highest in 237 days. The active cases now comprise 5.43 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has decreased to 93.31 per cent. The daily positivity rate has dropped from 17.94% to 17.22% while the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 16.65 per cent.
The overall count of the highly infectious Omicron variant reached 10,050 today with 29 states reporting cases of the new strain.
India has administered a total of 67,49,746 doses in the last 24 hours, which brings the total tally of doses administered to 1,61,16,60,078.
A total of 19,60,954 samples were tested in the last 24 hours.
The cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country have crossed the 161-crore mark. 94 per cent of India's adults have received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 72 per cent are fully vaccinated, according to the government.
Covid vaccination, including precaution doses, for individuals having lab test proven coronavirus infection will be deferred by three months after recovery, as per the new rules by the Centre. The suggestion is based on scientific evidence and recommendation of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, the Centre said.