At 12,428, India sees lowest daily surge since March

New Delhi: India logged 12,428 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, which is the lowest in 238 days, informed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Tuesday.

The death toll climbed to 4,55,068 with 356 daily fatalities, according to the data updated at 8 am.

The top five states which have registered maximum cases are Kerala with 6,664 cases, followed by Tamil Nadu with 1,112 cases, Maharashtra with 889 cases, West Bengal with 805 cases and Mizoram with 790 cases.

As many as 82.56 per cent of the new cases are reported from these five states, with Kerala alone responsible for 53.62 per cent of the new cases.

Maximum casualties were reported in Kerala (281), followed by Tamil Nadu with 14 daily deaths.

Of the 281 deaths, 53 were reported in the last few days, 219 were those which were not confirmed until June 18 last year due to lack of adequate documentation and 9 were designated as COVID deaths after receiving appeals based on the new guidelines of the Centre and Supreme Court directions, a state government release said.

The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been below 30,000 for 32 straight days and less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported for 121 consecutive days now.

The country's active caseload stands at 1,63,816, which is the lowest in 241 days. The active cases account for less than 1 per cent of total cases and are currently at 0.48 per cent, which is the lowest since March 2020.

With 15,951 recoveries in the last 24 hours, India's recovery rate stands at 98.19 per cent, which is the highest since the beginning of the pandemic. Also, the weekly positivity rate is at 1.24 per cent while the daily positivity rate remained at 1.10 per cent.

The country has so far conducted over 60.19 crore COVID tests.

Meanwhile, under the Nationwide Vaccination Drive, more than 102.94 crore vaccine doses have been administered in the country.