42,625 new Covid-19 cases take India's tally to 31,769,132
The increase in daily cases recorded by the health ministry comes amid a warning by the government that the pandemic and the second wave are not over yet
India's tally of daily coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases increased again on Wednesday after 42,625 new cases were recorded in the last 24 hours, the Union health ministry update showed. This is at least 12,000 cases more from Tuesday's tally of 30,549.
Today's cases took the total number of positive cases in the country to 31,769,132, the health ministry update at 8am showed. India also recorded 562 fatalities in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll from the start of pandemic to 425,757.
India has 410,353 active cases in the country, accounting for 1.28 per cent of the total cases seen so far. The active cases have increased by 5,395 in the last 24 hours. Additionally, 36,668 people recovered from the viral disease on Wednesday, taking the national recovery rate to 97.38. A total of 30,933,022 people have recovered from the disease so far.
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The increase in daily cases recorded by the health ministry comes amid a warning by the government that the pandemic and the second wave are not over yet. At least eight states in the country have a reproduction number over 1, which means the outbreak is expanding and a growing outbreak is possible at this stage, the health ministry said on Tuesday. Reproduction number - also known as the effective R-number - denotes, on average, how many people each infected person is passing the virus to. This figure should remain under 1 for a disease outbreak to be called under control.
In what has been a second concern for the authorities, the daily Covid-19 infections in India have started soaring again after a steady decline of nearly three months. At present, the spike is driven by states like Kerala, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh where the cases are increasing.
Officials from the health ministry said on Tuesday that the second wave is not over in the country yet as India is still reporting more than 30,000 cases per day.
"These cases are being reported from limited areas but when activities were opened up, there were some areas where Covid-19 safe behaviour wasn't followed and there could be an increase in cases," Lav Agarwal, joint secretary, Union ministry of health said.
