COVID: India's daily rise in new infections continues to be below 30,000 for 30 straight days

New Delhi: India's daily rise in new coronavirus infections continues to be below 30,000 for 30 straight days and less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported for 119 consecutive days now.

According to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Sunday, the country added 15,906 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total tally to 3,41,75,468, while the active cases declined to 1,72,594.

The death toll climbed to 4,54,269 with 561 fresh fatalities, according to the data updated at 8 am

The active cases comprise 0.51 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.17 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the ministry said.

A decrease of 1,134 cases has been recorded in the total active number of COVID-19 cases in a span of 24 hours.

Also, 13,40,158 tests were conducted on Saturday, taking the total cumulative tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 59,97,71,320.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 1.19 per cent and the weekly positivity rate was also recorded at 1.23 per cent, according to the ministry.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 3,35,48,605, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.33 per cent.

The cumulative doses administered in the country so far under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive has exceeded 102.10 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 crores on May 4 and three crores on June 23.

Meanwhile, the global coronavirus caseload has topped 243.3 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 4.94 million and vaccinations soared to over 6.78 billion, according to Johns Hopkins University.

In its latest update on Sunday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload, death toll and the total number of vaccine doses administered stood at 243,320,811, 4,942,947 and 6,784,777,718, respectively.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 45,427,365 and 735,800, according to the CSSE.

In terms of infections, India follows in second place with 34,159,562 cases.

The other worst countries with over 3 million cases are Brazil (21,723,559), the UK (8,775,889), Russia (8,078,309), Turkey (7,826,983), France (7,221,941), Iran (5,851,670), Argentina (5,279,818), Spain (4,997,732), Colombia (4,989,681), Italy (4,737,462), Germany (4,464,681), Indonesia (4,239,396) and Mexico (3,777,209), the CSSE figures showed.

Nations with a death toll of over 100,000 are Brazil (605,457), India (453,708), Mexico (285,953), Russia (225,417), Peru (200,019), Indonesia (143,176), the UK (139,878), Italy (131,802), Colombia (127,032), Iran (125,052), France (118,396) and Argentina (115,823).