India’s COVID-19 tally passes 34 lakh with a single day spike of over 76,000 cases

India’s COVID-19 tally raced past 34 lakh on Saturday, with a single-day spike of 76,472 cases. The number of recoveries surged to 26,48,998, pushing the recovery rate to 76.47 per cent on Saturday, according to the Union health ministry.

The total number of COVID-19 cases rose to 34,63,972, while the death toll due to the disease climbed to 62,550 with 1,021 people succumbing to it in a span of 24 hours.

The COVID-19 case fatality rate has further declined to 1.81 per cent in the country. There are 7,52,424 active coronavirus cases in the country currently, which account for 21.72 per cent of the total caseload.

India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7 and the 30-lakh mark on August 23.

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Friday had said that the pandemic should not be taken lightly. He said this while virtually inaugurating a Rs 237 crore-worth super speciality hospital built by the Centre in Indore, which is the worst-hit district in Madhya Pradesh in terms of the coronavirus infection count and deaths.

“The national COVID-19 recovery rate has reached 76.28 per cent, while the mortality rate has come down to 1.82 per cent which was the lowest in the world,” he said.

Nearly four crore tests have been conducted on people. Of them, nine lakh were done on Thursday alone, he said. “Although our country is better equipped to deal with the viral infection than the rest of the world, we should not take the pandemic lightly,” he said.

Through a video conferencing function, he called upon the leaders to make people in their area aware about the disease and motivate them to follow the government guidelines to stop the spread of the disease.