India reports highest new daily Covid cases of February
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New Delhi: The country reported single-day rise of 16,752 cases in the last 24 hours taking the overall tally to 1,10,96,731 on Sunday, Union Health Ministry said. The rise is the highest in this month as fresh Covid-19 cases are showing a worrying upward trend over the past one week
113 more deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours, taking the overall toll to 1,57,051.
The positivity rate has been rising gradually, which is now at 1.48 per cent. As per the Ministry's data, there are 1,64,511 active cases at present after 11,718 patients were discharged in a day.
The experts have expressed a number of possibilities which could be owed to the stride ranging from lax attitude of people towards following Covid protocols to likeability of "mutations and new strains" causing the surge, as has been studied by the laboratories involved in Covid detection across the country.
Last week, officials said that the average daily new infections for the last 15 days were oscillating between 9,000 to 12,000 while the deaths were between 78 to 120.
On February 9, India had reported 9,110 new cases, the lowest this year so far. Last year, the lowest 9,633 cases were recorded on June 3.
Till now, 1,07,75,169 persons have been discharged so far. The recovery rate has reduced to 97.10 per cent, a change of 0.4 per cent in the last two days. Meanwhile, the fatality rate remains 1.42 per cent.
On Friday, around 90 per cent of the new cases came from six states - Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Karnataka and Gujarat, while six states accounted for 84.62 per cent of the new deaths included Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka.
The Ministry also informed that 7,95,723 samples were tested on Saturday. The cumulative tests done by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) so far stands at 21,62,31,106.
(From IANS with edits)