COVID-19: India reports 44,643 cases, major share from Kerala

India on Friday recorded 44,643 fresh COVID-19 cases, which was a four per cent increase in the number of cases from Thursday, as per the Union Health Ministry's latest database.

The number of deaths reported was 464, and the total fatality count stands at 4,26,754 in the country.

Kerala, which remains a concern with most number of Covid cases in a day, reported 22,040 cases. It also reported 117 deaths.

Maharashtra comes second on the list with 9,026 cases and 120 deaths. Andhra Pradesh reported 2,145 positive cases, Tamil Nadu 1,997, Karnataka 1,785 are the leading numbers in cases reported. In the northeast, Assam reported 1,067 cases, while Mizoram and Meghalaya reported 725 and 576 cases, which are the top numbers in the region. Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand reported zero deaths in the last 24 hours.

At the same time, 41,096 patients recovered from the illness, taking the cumulative recovered count to 3,10,15,844 with a recovery rate of 97.36 per cent. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare updated that the active case pool stands at 4, 14,159, which is 1.29 per cent of the total infection and fatality rate at 1.34 per cent.

As per a report by NDTV, ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research) said that 47,65,33,650 samples had been tested in total since the virus outbreak in the country, while 16,40,287 were done on Thursday.

Meanwhile, 57,97,808 vaccine doses were administered on Thursday, out of the 49,53,27,595 doses administered in the nationwide vaccination drive since the programme was launched.

More than 136 crore Covid-19 vaccine doses are expected to be available till the end of this year, informed the Centre. For the next four months, India's vaccine programme will be accelerated by the Serum Institute of India's (SII) Covishield and Bharat Biotech's Covaxin. (ANI)