India sees less than 30k new infections since March 16, positivity rate at 1.73% – Hindustan Times

India registered less than 30,000 new coronavirus cases for the first time in 132 days (March 16) with 29,689 fresh infections being registered in the last 24 hours. This took the country active case tally to 3,98,100 which 1.27% of the total cases. The fall in active caseload below 4 lakh is also after 124 days, according to the latest updates from the Union Health Ministry’s Covid bulletin. The daily positivity rate stood at 1.73 per cent.

The number of cases registered in the last 24 hours is about 10,000 less than the number of samples that tested positive on Monday when the count of new cases was 39,361 which constituted1.31 per cent of the active cases.

As many as 415 lives were lost to the virus in the last 24 hours, while 42,363 patients were discharged from hospital during the same. This took the cumulative count of deaths to 4,21,382 and recoveries to 3,06,21,469. On Monday, discharges and fatalities stood at 35,968 and 416m respectively.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said 17,20,100 samples were tested for coronavirus in the last 24 hours taking the total tally to 45,91,64,121.

As many as 66 lakh doses of vaccines against Covid-19 were administered during the day which upped the cumulative count of inoculation to 44.19 crore as part of the national vaccination drive, the health ministry said.

In an earlier update, the ministry had said over 14 lakh beneficiaries in the age group 18-44 years across states/UTs have received their first dose and more than 65 lakh have received their second dose since the start of the third phase of the vaccination drive.