In an alarming development, the daily Coronavirus cases in India rose to 317,532 in the last 24 hours, taking the total caseload to 38,218,773, according to the Union health ministry’s data. This is the highest single-day tally the country has recorded in the last 8 months.
India also saw 491 more deaths due to Covid-19, pushing the nationwide toll to 4,87,693. With fresh cases, the active caseload in the country increased to 19,24,051.
Meanwhile, the number of infections due to the Omicron variant of coronavirus has surged to 9,287. As of Thursday, the recovery rate in India stands at 93.69 per cent, while the daily positivity rate has touched 16.41 per cent.
As many as 159.67 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far under the nationwide vaccination drive. The total number of tests carried out in India is over 700 million, with 1,935,180 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Thursday.