At 34,703, India reports lowest fresh new COVID cases in 3 months

India saw its lowest daily rise in COVID-19 cases in over 110 days after the country reported 34,703 new infections in the last 24 hours as per the health ministry's database updated on Tuesday.

As many as 553 succumbed to the viral disease while 51,864 recovered in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll and total recoveries to 403,281 and 29,752,294 respectively.

With 8,037 fresh cases, Kerala recorded the most number of infections over the last 24 hours. It was followed by Maharashtra (6,740).

At 4,64,357, the active caseload is the lowest in 101 days. It constitutes 1.52% of total cases.

Meanwhile, the recovery rate has risen to 97.17%. With 51,864 patients recovered in the last 24 hours, the daily recoveries continue to outnumber the daily cases for the 54th consecutive day.

In other news, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said experience shows no nation can solve the challenges of Covid-19 in isolation. "There is no parallel to such a pandemic in a hundred years. Experience shows that no nation, however powerful that nation is, can solve a challenge like this in isolation," he said while speaking at Cowin conclave.

Meanwhile, a report published by SBI Research said that the third wave of the COVID-19 is likely to hit India by mid-August, while cases may peak in September.

The report titled 'COVID-19: The race to finishing line' stated that vaccination is the only saviour as global data shows that, on average, the third wave peak cases are around 1.7 times the peak cases at the time of second-wave.

"India has achieved its second wave peak on May 7 and going by the current data, the country can experience around 10,000 cases somewhere around the second week of July," State Bank of India`s Group Chief Economic Adviser, Soumya Kanti Ghosh, said in the report.

"However, based on historical trends, the cases can start rising by the second fortnight of Aug` 21 with peak cases at least a month later," he added.