India's COVID tally shows marginal drop while Kerala contributes 50% of fresh cases

India's COVID tally continued to show improvement on Sunday as the country recorded 36,083 cases, a marginal drop from yesterday while Kerala contributed 19,451 cases to the country's daily numbers which is more than 50 per cent of new infections in the country. Kerala has a test positivity rate of 13.97 per cent.

Maharashtra, the worst-hit state in the country, reported 5,787 new infections and 179 fatalities in 24 hours. About 493 deaths were recorded all over the country during the period, according to the Health Ministry.

Delhi reported 50 new COVID-19 cases and one death due to the disease in the last 24 hours. The total cumulative cases reported in the city have gone up to 14,37,038 including 478 active cases.

Assam reported 11 more virus-related deaths, which took the total fatalities to 5,482, according to a bulletin issued by the National Health Mission. The coronavirus caseload in the northeastern state mounted 5,79,488 as 755 more people tested positive for the infection, it said.

India's COVID-19 vaccination coverage has reached 54.38 crore with 52 lakh vaccine doses administered till Saturday evening.

The daily positivity rate remains less than 3 per cent for the last 20 days and is presently at 2 per cent. Active cases constitute 1.20% of total cases, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate stands 97.46 per cent, the Union Health Ministry said.

Around 2.6 lakh people or 0.048 per cent of those vaccinated have tested positive for COVID-19 after getting at least one dose of a vaccine, according to the Health Ministry. All three Covid vaccines in India - Covishield, Covaxin and Sputnik V - seemed to provide similar levels of protection from 'breakthrough infections', sources told NDTV.

The UK has reduced the cost of Covid tests for international travellers from Amber list countries like India from 88 pounds to 68 pounds (USD 122 to USD 94), after many representations over the high charges of the mandatory testing, PTI reported.

According to the Johns Hopkins University, the global coronavirus caseload has topped 206.6 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 4.35 million and vaccinations soared to over 4.64 billion,

In its latest update on Sunday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload, death toll and vaccination tally stood at 206,659,550, 4,353,037 and 4,645,940,785, respectively.

Cases are rising in about one-third of the world's countries, many of which have not even given half their population a first dose.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 36,631,893 and 621,209, respectively, according to the CSSE.

In terms of infections, India follows in the second place with 32,156,493 cases.

The other worst countries with over 3 million cases are Brazil (20,350,142), France (6,471,262), Russia (6,490,421), the UK (6,270,667), Turkey (6,039,827), Argentina (5,080,908), Colombia (4,864,629), Spain (4,693,540), Italy (4,435,008), Iran (4,389,085), Germany (3,824,546), Indonesia (3,833,541) and Mexico (3,068,329), the CSSE figures showed.

In terms of deaths, Brazil comes second with 568,788 fatalities.

Nations with a death toll of over 100,000 are India (430,732), Mexico (247,414), Peru (197,279), Russia (166,795), the UK (131,210), Italy (128,413), Colombia (123,356), Indonesia (116,366), France (112,705) and Argentina (108,936).