India reports 8,895 new Covid cases, 2,796 on Sunday

India's Covid-19 tally rose by 8,895 on Sunday, pushing the overall cases 34,633,255, according to the daily bulletin issued by the Union ministry of health and family welfare. The death toll reached 473,326, as two states Bihar and Kerala carried out a reconciliation exercise of its Covid data.

As per health ministry, the death toll saw a jump of 2,796 fatalities after 2,426 reconciled deaths by Bihar were adjusted in Sunday's database. Kerala also cleared a backlog of 263 deaths.

The active caseload saw a fall and reached 99,155. It currently accounts for less than 1% of total cases with 0.29 per cent, the lowest since March 2020.

In the last 24 hours, as many as 6,918 people recuperated from Covid-19, taking the total number of recoveries to 34,060,774.

The recovery rate is currently at 98.35 per cent, the data also showed.

According to the data, the daily positivity rate (0.73%) has been less than 2 per cent for the last 62 days. The weekly positivity rate (0.80%) has been less than 1 per cent for the last 21 days.

Meanwhile, the number of people infected with the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 reached four on Saturday after two more people tested positive for the new strain.

One of the Omicron positive patients includes a 33-year-old man from Kalyan-Dombivli municipal area near Mumbai who had returned from South Africa via Dubai. The man, reported to be a marine engineer, was unvaccinated.

A 72-year-old NRI man from Gujarat was also found to be infected with the new strain, classified as 'variant of concern' by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The country's first two cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 were reported on Thursday in Karnataka --in a 66-year-old South African flyer, and a 46-year-old Bengaluru doctor with no travel history. Both men were fully vaccinated.