India today reported 38,667 fresh COVID-19 cases, which is 3.6 per cent lower than yesterday's cases. The daily test positivity rate was at 1.73 per cent, which has been less than 3 per cent for last 19 days.
The cumulative coronavirus case count of India has now climbed to 32,156,493, while the active cases increased to 3,87,673.
The death toll climbed to 4,30,732 the data updated at 8 am showed.
The health ministry, in a statement, said less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported since 48 consecutive days. This is a result of sustained and collaborative efforts by the Centre and the states/UTs, the ministry said.
With 20,452 fresh cases, Kerala leads the states in most number of Covid cases in a single day. The state also reported 114 deaths, the most in any state after Maharashtra.
In new vaccination strategy, the Kerala government plans to inoculate all non-Covid individuals in containment zones. The state will carry out extensive vaccination drives today, tomorrow and day after with focus on containment zones.
Meanwhile, 66 people have been found infected with the Delta plus variant of coronavirus in Maharashtra so far, some of them fully vaccinated, and five of them have died, including one in Mumbai, the State health department said on August 13.
Tamil Nadu with 1,933 fresh Covid cases, Andhra Pradesh (1,746), Karnataka (1,669) are other southern states where daily cases are above 1,000. Telangana reported 427 cases.
According to the ICMR data, as many as 22,29,798 tests were conducted on Friday taking the total cumulative tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 49,17,00,577.
The weekly positivity rate also remained below 5% and is currently at 2.05%. Further, the daily positivity rate has contracted to 1.73%, less than 3% for 19 consecutive days.
Around 2.6 lakh people - 0.048 per cent of the more than 53.14 crore vaccine doses administered so far - have tested positive for COVID-19 after getting at least one dose of a vaccine, Health Ministry sources said yesterday.