India records lowest daily cases in 2 months, several states begin easing COVID curbs

New Delhi: With a little over 100,000 new infections recorded across India on Monday, daily cases in the country dropped to the lowest level seen in over two months, underlining the country's turnaround after the brutal second wave of the viral outbreak.

This is the lowest spike since April 5 when the country saw a rise of 96,982 cases in a day. During the same time span, 2,427 more people succumbed to the pandemic, the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry said.

India's overall tally of Covid-19 cases now stands at 2,89,09,975 with 14,01,609 active cases and 3,49,186 deaths so far.

Over the last few days, India's fresh Covid cases have seen a downward trend, maintaining over one lakh infections every 24 hours, while the deaths have also remained below the 3,000 mark.

As Covid cases across the country witness drop in daily caseload count, several Indian states have started to relax lockdown curbs as coronavirus infections subside.

Among the states which have eased Covid lockdown, restriction includes Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Sikkim, Haryana etc.

Meanwhile, a report by the Times of India suggests that cases in most states of northern India have been declining at double the speed as compared with southern states.

According to the report, the seven-day rolling average of daily cases in Haryana has declined at an average rate of 8.9 per cent each day (till June 3), the sharpest among 18 major states that TOI looked at. The decline has been almost as dramatic in (8.5 per cent), Delhi (8.2 per cent), (8.1 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (7.8 per cent) and Uttarakhand (7.6 per cent).

In Maharashtra and across the south, the fall has been much more gradual, ranging from 2.7 per cent in Tamil Nadu to 4.2 per cent in Andhra Pradesh.

After battling a brutal second wave for weeks, fresh Covid cases came down below the three lakh mark for the first time on May 17 after touching a record high of 4,14,188 on May 7.

In the last three weeks, India has recorded over 90,000 deaths. India registered record fatalities due to Covid-19 on May 21 with 4,529 deaths -- the highest from Covid infection in any country in a day since the coronavirus outbreak was reported in China's Wuhan in December 2019. It surpassed 4,468 deaths in the US on January 12, and earlier 4,211 in Brazil on April 6.

According to the Health Ministry, a total of 1,74,399 people have been discharged in the last 24 hours, taking the total discharge to 2,71,59,180 to date.

The Health Ministry said that a total of 23,27,86,482 people have been vaccinated so far in the country, including 13,90,916 who were administered vaccines in the last 24 hours.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, 36,63,34,111 samples have been tested up to June 6 for Covid-19. Of these 15,87,589 samples were tested on Sunday.