India reports another record single-day spike in deaths, cases

For the third consecutive day, India on Saturday recorded over 3 lakh fresh infections, continuing the trend of registering the world's highest daily tally, With 3,46,786 people testing positive out of 17,53,569 people tested in the last 24 hours, India's total Covid-19 tally reached 1,66,10481 on Saturday. The single-day toll also made a new record as 2,624 people died, taking India's total death tally to almost 1.9 lakh (1,89,544).

Around 2.19 lakh people have recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the recovery rate of the country to 83.92 per cent, the Union health ministry's bulletin showed. The number of active Covid-19 cases in the country is over 25 lakh, which is around 15 per cent of the total cases.

Covid-19: Second national wave still rising

The number of cases in India started rising since February. While the rise at that time was limited to only a few states, including Maharashtra, in March and April, the second wave of the pandemic reached most of the states while India's vaccination drive was on. In the past few days, the Covid-19 situation has become precarious, as the staggering rise in the number of daily infections has been coupled with an acute shortage of hospital beds, oxygen, drugs etc.

Expressing concern over India's situation, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said people are dying across the world because they are not being vaccinated against Covid-19, they are not being tested and not being treated. "The situation in India is a devastating reminder of what the virus can do," he said.

Chairing a meeting of chief ministers of the high-burden covid states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday assured the Centre's full support to all states and asked the state governments to deal strictly with any kind of hoarding, black-marketing of essential medicines and injections. In a separate meeting with the leading oxygen manufacturers of the country, the Prime Minister stressed the need for good coordination between the government and the oxygen producers.