India reports 131,968 new COVID-19 cases, tally caseload surpasses 13 mln

NEW DELHI:  As many as 131,968 new COVID-19 cases were registered in the past 24 hours in India, said official data released by the health ministry on Friday.

The latest single-day spike, the highest so far, took the total tally to 13,060,542.

This is the fourth time within this week and the third consecutive day that more than 100,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in India. Earlier, 103,558 new cases were reported on Monday, while 115,736 new cases were reported on Wednesday, and 126,789 new cases on Thursday.

Besides, as many as 780 deaths took place due to the pandemic since Thursday morning, taking the total death toll to 167,642, showed the ministry’s data.

There are still 979,608 active cases in the country, while 11,913,292 people have been discharged so far from hospitals after medical treatment.

There was an increase of 69,289 active cases during the previous 24 hours, out of which the maximum number of cases were reported from the southwestern state of Maharashtra.

The number of daily active cases has been on the rise over the past few days, as another wave of COVID-19 looms large in India.

In January the number of daily cases in the country had come down to below 10,000. As many as 9,102 new cases were reported on Jan. 25-26, which was the lowest in the previous 237 days. Prior to that the lowest number of daily new cases were 9,304 registered on June 4, 2020.

India kicked off a nationwide vaccination drive on Jan. 16. So far over 94,334,262 people have been vaccinated across the country.

Meanwhile, the federal government has ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities across the country, as over 254 million tests have been conducted so far.