India records over 21,000 COVID-19 cases for 2nd day

NEW DELHI, July 22: India recorded over 21,000 fresh cases of COVID-19 on Friday for the second straight day, officials said.

According to federal health ministry data released on Friday morning, 21,880 new cases of COVID-19 were reported during the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 43,847,065 in the country.

The cases reported on Friday marked a slight increase in comparison to the daily caseload of Thursday, which was 21,566.

With the reporting of fresh cases, India's active caseload currently stands at 149,482.

The country also logged 60 related deaths during this period, pushing the overall death toll to 525,930 since the beginning of the pandemic, the ministry said.

With the increase in cases, the daily positivity rate has risen to 4.42 percent and the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 4.51 percent, the ministry data showed.

The ministry said so far 43,171,653 people have been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals, of whom 21,219 were discharged during the past 24 hours.

According to the federal health ministry, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the country had exceeded 2 billion doses, and until Friday morning 2,013,097,819 doses were administered.

At present the Indian government is focusing on promoting booster doses as the uptake for the third dose has been low. The drive to provide free booster doses of COVID-19 vaccine to all adults at government centers began last week. According to officials, the exercise is aimed at improving the booster dose coverage among the people in wake of the detection of new variants.

In India, the detection of a super contagious omicron mutant (BA.2.75) has worried health officials. There are fears that the new mutant may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infections.

So far over 871 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country.

Meanwhile, local governments in various states have issued advisories urging people to wear face masks and follow COVID-19 protocols in mass gatherings in the wake of an increase in daily infections.