Covid cases cross 2.5L, toll 7k as malls, shrines set to open

NEW DELHI: A day before malls, shrines and several other public places are set to open in many parts of the country, fresh Covid-19 infections surged to a new high with over 10,700 cases reported on Sunday, even as India’s overall count of cases went past the 2.5 lakh mark and deaths from the virus crossed 7,000.
India’s tally of Covid-19 cases stood at 2,57,334 after 10,749 new infections were added on Sunday, as per the latest data from state governments. It took five days for the count to rise from 2 lakh cases (on June 2) to 2.5 lakh.
It was the second straight day when the country added more than 10,000 cases in 24-hour period, having recorded 10,785 new infections on Saturday. For perspective, it had taken 74 days for Covid-19 infections to rise from one to 10,000. The country’s first case was confirmed on January 30, while the count crossed 10,000 on April 13.
Deaths from the virus remained over 250 for the fifth consecutive day, although Sunday’s toll, at 262, was lower than those on Saturday and Friday, when 297 and 295 fatalities, respectively, were recorded. The overall toll stood at 7,201. The spurt in cases on Sunday was led by Maharashtra, which reported 3,007 new infections, the second highest single-day number in the state after 3,041 cases recorded on May 24. At least four states/Union territories reported their highest single-day jump in cases — Tamil Nadu (1,515 new cases), Jammu & Kashmir (620), Haryana (496) and Bengal (449). In an indication of the spread of the coronavirus in the country, as many as 32 states/Union territories reported new cases on Sunday while 18 reported deaths from the virus.
In Maharashtra, Sunday’s spike was only the second time that the state had reported more than 3,000 new cases in a day, of which 1,420 were from Mumbai alone. The city also accounted for 61 of the 91 new deaths reported from Maharashtra.
In Gujarat, the death toll in Ahmedabad crossed 1,000. On Sunday, Ahmedabad recorded 21 deaths with the death toll climbing to 1,015. It has now become India’s second district to have lost over 1,000 lives to Covid-19 after Mumbai, which has recorded 1,638 deaths.
With 480 new cases, Gujarat also crossed 20,000 total positive cases with the tally at 20,097. Jammu & Kashmir on Sunday witnessed a massive spike in Covid-19 cases with 620 people testing positive for the infection, taking the tally in the Union territory to 4,087, officials said. With almost one case every three minutes in the last 24 hours, Haryana saw its sharpest spike of 496 cases in a single day, taking the state’s overall novel coronavirus count to 4,448 cases on Sunday. Adding over 8,000 infections in the last eight days, Tamil Nadu’s Covid-19 tally on Sunday shot past the 31,000 mark.