India reports less than 30,000 daily COVID cases after 132 days

India recorded 29,689 new cases of the novel coronavirus, along with 415 deaths in the past 24 hours. The daily caseload is less than 30,000 after 132 days. Kerala and Maharashtra reported 11,586 new cases and 4,877 infections respectively.

The active cases, currently at 3,98,100, dropped below 4 lakh for the first time since March 24. As of Monday, there were 3.98 lakh active cases in the country, of which 1.37 lakh infections are from Kerala.

In other news, India is likely to miss its vaccination target of 13.5 crore doses for July if it continues to vaccinate at the current pace. Till Sunday, 9.94 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines had been administered this month, at an average of about 38.26 lakh doses per day.

At the current pace, India would end up administering about 12.5 crore doses by the end of July. To meet the target of 13.5 crore, about 60 lakh daily doses would have to be administered, a number that has been attained only twice this month.

The pace of Covid-19 vaccination has slowed down considerably in July, after a booming start to the new phase of universal vaccination on June 21, when a record 87 lakh doses were administered. It was then that the target of 13.5 crore doses for July was announced. Official data shows that the weekly doses administered had come down from a high of 4.5 crore in the week ending June 26 to 2.8 crore in the week ending July 25. However, this is still significantly higher than the weekly average of 1.51 crore doses administered during the 27 weeks until July 23.