New Delhi, January 24:
Coronavirus cases in India continued to surge over 3 lakh for the fifth day in a row as the country registered 306,064 fresh infections in the last 24 hours, the Union health ministry bulletin showed on Monday morning. The death toll surged to 4,89,848 with 439 new fatalities.
Notably, as high as 60 per cent of the patients who have died in the third wave of pandemic in India were either unvaccinated or had received only a single dose.
India’s active caseload, driven by the Omicron surge, currently stands at 22,49,335. The active numbers are up by 62,130 since the previous day, recording 5.69 per cent of the total infections.
A total of 2,43,495 people recovered from the viral infection in the last 24 hours, the health bulletin stated.
The daily positivity rate showed a 3 per cent rise to 20.75 per cent as compared to yesterday’s 17.73 per cent, while the weekly positivity increased to 17.03 per cent.
More than 27 lakh vaccine doses have been administered in the last 24 hours, recording a cumulative total of more than 1.62 billion jabs under nationwide vaccination drive.
A study conductged by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras showed that the existing Omicron-driven Covid-19 wave in India is likely to peak in the next 14 days, meaning that cases will be the highest around February 6.
The result is based on the institute’s analysis of the national ‘R-value,’ which, it said, declined further in the week of January 14-21.
The data shared in the study revealed that in individual cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai, the R-value stood at 0.56, 0.67, 0.98 and 1.2, respectively. If this number goes below 1, the pandemic is considered to have ‘ended’, the researchers explained.
Currently, Maharashtra continues to top the Covid-19 chart in India, although new cases in Mumbai have dropped significantly. The southern states of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh hold the next few spots due to a Covid-19 surge in the region.
