India adds highest Covid-19 cases in 3 weeks amid rapid Omicron outbreak
New Delhi, Dec 29 (EFE).- India Wednesday added the highest number of 9,000 Covid-19 cases in three weeks.
The 44 percent rise in coronavirus infections from a day ago sparked an alert amid a rapid outbreak of the Omicron variant of the virus in the country of 1.35 billion people.
The country has registered more than 780 Omicron infections, including 128 new cases of the highly-transmissible variant in the last 24 hours.
Some 9,195 people tested positive for the coronavirus infection in the last 24 hours from Tuesday morning, said the federal health ministry.
The country had reported more than 9,400 cases on Dec.8, and the daily tally had since been hovering around 7,000 to 8,000.
India added 302 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, bringing the total fatalities to 480,592.
The country added 6,358 infections on Tuesday morning.
With this, India’s total Covid-19 tally has gone up to more than 3.48 million while the active cases increased to 77,002, the ministry said.
The numbers do not reflect a significant rebound of the virus outbreak in the country.
But the rapid outbreak of the new variant, detected in 21 of the 28 Indian regions, indicates that the third coronavirus wave could be looming around.
The national capital recorded 238 cases, followed by Maharashtra at 167, Gujarat 73, Kerala 65, and Telangana 62.
Amid a steep hike in daily cases, with almost 500 a day ago, the city government in Delhi imposed night curfews and the partial closure of shopping centers and non-essential shops to contain the outbreak.
Maharashtra, whose capital is Mumbai, Wednesday surpassed the barrier of more than 1,000 cases after several weeks of fewer than that.
The state government has ordered gathering restrictions to avoid crowds on the New Year.
But the active cases in the country are less than one percent of the total infections.
The recovery rate stands at 98.4 percent.
India suffered a virulent wave of infections in mid-April and May when the daily number of cases crossed 400,000 cases and deaths 4,500 for several days.
The deadly second wave left images of hospitals on the brink of collapse and saturated crematoria. EFE
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