India records over 21,000 COVID-19 cases for 3rd day

NEW DELHI, July 24: India on Saturday recorded over 21,000 fresh cases of COVID-19 for the third straight day, officials said.

According to health ministry data released on Saturday morning, 21,411 new cases of COVID-19 were reported during the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 43,868,476 in the country.

With the reporting of fresh cases, India's active caseload currently stands at 150,100.

The country also logged 67 COVID-19-related deaths during this period, which has pushed the overall death toll to 525,997 since the beginning of the pandemic, the ministry said.

With the increase in cases, the daily positivity rate rose to 4.46 percent and the weekly positivity rate was also recorded at 4.46 percent, the ministry data showed.

So far 43,192,379 people have been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals, of whom 20,726 were discharged during the past 24 hours.

According to the health ministry, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the country exceeded 2 billion doses and 2,016,814,771 doses have been administered until Saturday morning.

So far over 872 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted across India.

At present, the Indian government is focussing on promoting booster doses as the uptake for the third dose has been low. The drive to provide free booster doses of the 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.

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.

Meanwhile, authorities in the northeastern state of Manipur have decided not to conduct physical classes for children below 12 years of age until Aug. 7 as a precautionary measure in wake of an increase in COVID-19 cases in the state.