India’s 24-hour Covid toll goes up to 437; Kerala leading contributor with 370 fatalities

India on Wednesday saw a major rise in its daily Covid-19 toll after 437 fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours, according to Union health ministery's update at 8am. This took the total number of deaths to 466,584.

The country recorded 9,283 new cases and 10,949 recoveries in the last 24 hours, taking the caseload and total recoveries to 34,535,763 and 33,957,698, respectively. The active cases have further declined to 111,481, and have been the lowest in 537 days, according to the Union health ministry.

Of Wednesday's death count in India, 370 deaths were reported from Kerala alone. According to the state health department's bulletin, of these 370 deaths, 57 were recorded over the last few days and the remaining 313 were designated as virus deaths after receiving appeals based on new guidelines of the Centre and the directions of the Supreme Court.

Kerala on Tuesday clocked nearly 5,000 cases and 5,978 recoveries. The total cases in the southern state have climbed to 5,097,845 including 38,045 deaths, 52,710 active cases and 5,018,279 recoveries.

Last month too, Kerala added a backlog of Covid-19 deaths (on October 27), which pushed India's 24-hour fatality count to 585.

Meanwhile, over 634 million samples have been tested for Covid-19 in the country so far, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Wednesday, adding 1,157,697 samples were tested in the last 24 hours

On the vaccination front, the Union health ministry said on Wednesday that the cumulative coverage has exceeded 1.18 billion with 7,658,203 doses administered to eligible beneficiaries in the last 24 hours. Of the total vaccination count, 413,430,633 beneficiaries are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus disease and the remaining 770,992,940 have only received the first dose.