Health

India record under 6,000 Covid infections: lowest daily count in 19 months

New Delhi, Dec 14 (EFE).- India on Tuesday registered 5,784 fresh Covid infections, marking the first time that the daily caseload has dropped below 6,000 since May 2020, when the pandemic had just begun to spread in the country’s over 1.35 billion inhabitants.

According to the health ministry’s daily update, the number of cases reported within the past 24 hours was the lowest in 571 days – almost 19 months – and took the total number of infections so far to over 34.7 million.

The death toll within the same period stood at 252, taking the total number of Covid deaths to 475,888.

India, which became the global epicenter of the pandemic in May 2021 with over 400,000 daily cases and more than 4,000 deaths, has breathed easy as cases have dropped and the pressure on its health system has reduced, with fewer hospitalizations.

After its hospitals filled up and medicines and oxygen fell short during the second wave in mid-2021 due to the huge influx of patients, as of Tuesday India had around 89,000 active cases, just 0.2 percent of the total cases confirmed so far.

The country has not witnessed such low number of patients and active cases since mid-2020, while the recovery rate currently stands at 98.3 percent, the highest since the pandemic began.

However, Covid-19 transmission remains a primary concern for the country as it witnessed one of the worst health crises in the world due to the pandemic, and the detection of the new Omicron variant has kept authorities on alert.

In the last 15 days, India has gone from confirming the first two cases of the variant – first identified in South Africa – to verifying 49 cases, as confirmed by health authorities on Tuesday.

The majority of these infections are linked to travelers coming from high-risk countries.

The vaccination campaign, the government’s main action plan to fight the disease, has led to over 1.3 billion vaccine doses being administered since January 2021, with over 520 million people receiving both doses of the jab.

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