Covid-19: India sees 18,700 new cases, highest in almost 2 months

Daily cases of Covid-19 in India continued to inch upward, with Saturday’s count at a 59-day high of over 18,700 as Maharashtra logged more than 10,000 cases for the second day running.

Deaths from the virus, however, dropped to 99 after two days of 100-plus tolls. India reported 18,765 new cases on Saturday (with Assam’s data yet to come in), the highest single-day tally since January 6.

Although 18,894 infections were recorded on January 28, more than 6,000 of these were backlog cases from Chhattisgarh. On Friday, 18,307 fresh cases were recorded. With this, the seven-day rolling average of daily Covid-19 cases in India rose for the 20th consecutive day to 16,311.

The average has been rising uninterruptedly since February 14, reflecting a resurgence of the pandemic in several states after five months of overall decline at the national level.

Cases were inching up in several other states. Tamil Nadu recorded 562 new infections of the virus, Gujarat 571, Madhya Pradesh 467, Delhi 321, Rajasthan 233, Bengal 259. In each of these states, Saturday’s tally was the highest since different dates in the month of January.

Following a spike in cases, the Rajasthan government has decided to set up checkposts at the entry points of each district. Karnataka, another state reporting a spike recorded 580 new cases and five more fatalities on Saturday. It had reported 677 cases on the previous day. Of the fresh cases, Bengaluru Urban accounted for 367.