COVID: India reports 219 deaths, lowest in 5 months

New Delhi: India recorded 219 fresh fatalities on Monday, the lowest in 167 days, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Monday. The 219 new fatalities include 74 from Kerala, and 67 from Maharashtra.

With 38,948 new coronavirus infections, the total tally of COVID-19 cases has climbed to 3,30,27,621, while the death toll has climbed to 4,40,752. According to the data updated at 8 am today, the case fatality rate has declined to 1.33 per cent after 48 days. India had reported 199 deaths in a single day on March 23.

The active cases have declined to 4,04,874 comprising 1.23 per cent of the total infections while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 97.44 per cent, the ministry said.

A decrease of 5,174 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours. Less than 50,000 daily cases are being reported for 71 consecutive days, the ministry said.

As many as 14,10,649 tests were conducted on Sunday taking the total cumulative tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 53,14,68,867 .

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 2.76 per cent while the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 2.58 per cent. It has been below three per cent for the last 73 days, according to the ministry.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 3,21,81,995.

The cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country so far under the nationwide vaccination drive has reached 68.75 crore.

India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.

India crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crore on June 23.

A total of 4,40,752 deaths have been reported so far in the country including 1,37,774 from Maharashtra, 37,409 from Karnataka, 35,018 from Tamil Nadu, 25,082 from Delhi, 22,856 from Uttar Pradesh, 21,496 from Kerala and 18,502 from West Bengal.

The ministry stressed that more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities.

"Our figures are being reconciled with the Indian Council of Medical Research," the ministry said on its website, adding that state-wise distribution of figures is subject to further verification and reconciliation.

Meanwhile, the global coronavirus caseload has topped 220.6 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 4.56 million and vaccinations soared to over 5.44 billion, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

In its latest update on Monday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload, death toll and vaccination tally stood at 220,624,875, 4,566,726 and 5,446,556,336, respectively.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 39,941,581 and 648,467, respectively, according to the CSSE.

In terms of infections, India follows in the second place with 32,988,673 cases.

The other worst countries with over 3 million cases are Brazil (20,890,779), France (6,921,275), the UK (7,010,540), Russia (6,912,375), Turkey (6,412,247), Argentina (5,203,802), Iran (5,129,407), Colombia (4,918,649), Spain (4,877,755), Italy (4,571,440), Indonesia (4,129,020), Germany (4,013,808) and Mexico (3,420,880), the CSSE figures showed.

In terms of deaths, Brazil comes second with 583,628 fatalities.

Nations with a death toll of over 100,000 are India (440,533), Mexico (262,868), Peru (198,447), Russia (183,896), Indonesia (135,861), the UK (133,553), Italy (129,515), France (115,401), Colombia (125,278), Argentina (112,511) and Iran (110,674).