Kerala accounts for 35% of Covid daily cases in country, records 38,949 fresh cases, 542 deaths

NEW DELHI: Kerala and Maharashtra are still at the forefront in number of daily Covid cases in the country. India recorded 38,949 new COVID-19 cases, which took the infection tally to 3,10,26,829, while the death toll reached 4,12,531 with 542 more fatalities, according to Union health ministry data updated on Friday.

The active cases have declined to 4,30,422 and comprise 1.39 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate stands at 97.28 per cent, the data updated at 8 am showed.

It said that a decrease of 1,619 has been recorded in the number of active cases in a span of 24 hours.

The five states account for 74.01 per cent of the daily cases in the country. Of this, 35.36 per cent is in Kerala. During the last 24 hours, 13,773 cases were reported in Kerala. 8010 in Maharashtra, 2526 in Andhra Pradesh, 2405 in Tamil Nadu and 2110 in Odisha.

The ministry said 19,55,910 tests were conducted on Thursday, taking the total cumulative tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 44,00,23,239, while the daily positivity rate was recorded at 1.99 per cent.

The positivity rate has been less than three per cent for 25 consecutive days, it said.

The weekly positivity rate stands at 2.14 per cent, according to the health ministry.

The number of people who have recovered from the disease has increased to 3,01,83,876, while the case fatality rate has risen to 1.33 per cent, the data stated.

The vaccine doses administered so far has reached 39.53 crore under the nationwide inoculation drive against COVID-19.

India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20 lakh-mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16 last year.

It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one crore-mark on December 19 last year.

India crossed two crore cases on May 4 and three crore cases on June 23.

The 542 new fatalities included 170 deaths from Maharashtra and 87 from Kerala, the ministry said.

In total, 4,12,531 deaths have been reported in the country, including 1,26,560 from Maharashtra, 36,037 from Karnataka, 33,606 from Tamil Nadu, 25,022 from Delhi, 22,705 from Uttar Pradesh, 17,970 from West Bengal and 16,212 from Punjab.

The ministry said that more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities.

The recovery rate in India today is 97.28%. Maharashtra has the highest daily mortality rate (170) followed by Kerala (87). In the last 24 hours, 38.78 lakh doses of the vaccine were given in the country. With this, the total number of vaccine doses given is 39.53 crore.