Coronaviurs: Total Cases Cross 78,000 Mark; Death Toll Climbs To 2549 In India

India has seen a spike of 3,722 positive Coronavirus cases and 134 deaths in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said on Thursday.

The total number of positive cases in the country now stands at  78,003, including 49219 active cases, 26235 cured/discharged/migrated cases. A total of 2,549 people have died so far, said Health Ministry.

With 25,922 confirmed cases, Maharashtra is the worst affected by the infection in the country so far. Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, with 9,267 and 9,227, cases respectively are the next worst affected by the disease. The national capital, Delhi, is just a couple of cases behind the 8 thousand mark as per the update on Thursday morning.

Nine states and union territories have not reported any new COVID-19 patients in the last 24 hours and the rate of doubling of cases has increased to 12.6 days, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Wednesday.

Elaborating on health infrastructure preparedness in the country, Vardhan said 900 dedicated COVID-19 hospitals with a capacity of 1,79,882 beds (1,60,610 isolation and 19,272 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds), 2,040 dedicated COVID-19 health centres with 1,29,689 beds (1,19,340 isolation and 10,349 ICU beds) and 5,577 COVID-19 care centres with 4,93,101 beds are available as of now.

Vardhan highlighted that testing capacity has increased in the country to 1,00,000 tests per day and a total 18,56,477 tests have been done so far for COVID-19 with 94,708 samples being tested on Tuesday.

So far 352 government and 140 private laboratories have been given approval for conducting COVID-19 tests, officials said.

(With PTI Inputs)