India's COVID-19 tally rises to 11,474,605 with nearly 36,000 new cases

India's COVID-19 tally rose to 11,474,605 on Thursday as 35,871 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours, said the latest data from the health ministry.
   
According to the official data, the death toll mounted to 159,216 as 172 COVID-19 patients died since Wednesday morning.
   
The number of new cases registered during the past 24 hours is the highest daily tally so far this year.
   
There are still 252,364 Active Cases in the country, while 11,063,025 people have been discharged so far from hospitals after medical treatment.
   
There was an increase of 17,958 active cases during the previous 24 hours, out of which a maximum of 13,957 were reported from the southwestern state of Maharashtra.
   
The number of daily active cases had been on the rise over the past few days, as another wave of COVID-19 looms large in India.
   
A few weeks ago, the number of daily cases 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 launched a nationwide vaccination drive on Jan. 16 with two types of vaccines being administered to the people. So far over 37 million Indian people have been vaccinated.
   
Meanwhile, the federal government has ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities across the country, as more than 230 million tests have been conducted so far.
   
As many as 230,313,163 tests have been conducted, out of which 1,063,379 tests were conducted on Wednesday alone, said the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Thursday.
   
The national capital Delhi, which has been one of the most COVID-19 affected places in the country, has been witnessing comparatively a lesser number of cases over past months. As many as 536 new cases and three deaths were registered in the city through Wednesday.
   
So far as many as 10,948 people have died in the national capital due to COVID-19, confirmed the Delhi's health department.