Health

India’s Covid-19 infection count crosses 26 millions

New Delhi, May 21 (EFE).- India on Friday crossed yet another grim milestone of 26 million Covid-19 infections, with daily virus fatalities again crossing 4,000 a day after a minor dip.

The federal health ministry said 259,551 tested positive for the coronavirus in the last 24 hours from Thursday morning, far from the 400,000 daily cases recorded for days earlier this month.

The new daily figures raised the overall caseload in the country to 26.03 million since the pandemic broke out last year.

The ministry said 4,209 people lost their lives due to the disease over the past day, bringing the total Covid-19 death toll to 291,331.

On Thursday, the country added fewer than 4,000 daily Covid-19 deaths for the first time in almost a week.

India remains the second-worst hit country in terms of the number of infections after the United States, which has about 33 million cases.

The second-most populous country has the third-highest number of coronavirus fatalities after the US (602,616) and Brazil (444,391).

Health workers in India carried out more than 2 million PCR tests for detecting SARS-CoV-2 for the second consecutive day.

The number of active cases stands at 3.1 million, while the positivity rate is 16.2 percent, indicating gradual signs of recovery even as the severity of the pandemic continues to be critical.

The World Health Organization (WHO) considers the pandemic to be under control if the positivity rate is below 5 percent.

However, experts cast doubt on the official data because the virus outbreak has hit the rural areas that lack the testing and healthcare infrastructure.

The vaccination campaign reached almost 192 million inoculations over the previous last day after a total of 1.4 million doses were administered.

A little over 42.6 million people have received two doses of the vaccines.

India’s vaccination drive, the world’s largest, has also hit a roadblock after an acute shortage of jabs.

Several states have put on hold the vaccination drive due to the unavailability of the stock. The country had aimed to immunize 300 million people by July, which seems highly impossible given the current inoculation pace. EFE

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