New Delhi, Oct 22 (UNI) Though Bollywood A-listers threw their might behind anti-Covid-19 campaign, India recorded 55,838 fresh cases of the deadly infection in the past 24 hours that took the nation's overall caseload to 77,06,946, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare updated on Thursday.
The death toll soared to 1,16,616 with 702 fresh fatalities.
Durga Pujas across the world went online.
The World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 41.1 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 1.13 million fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In Rio de Janeiro, a Brazilian volunteer who participated in the trials of COVID-19 vaccine, developed by the Oxford and the AstraZeneca laboratory, has died, authorities reported.
Of the fresh fatalities in India, maximum 180 were recorded from Maharashtra, 88 from Karnataka, 64 from Bengal, 47 from Delhi, 44 from Chhattisgarh, 41 from Uttar Pradesh, 39 from Tamil Nadu, 27 from Andhra Pradesh, 26 from Kerala and 23 from Punjab.
Active cases saw a drop of 24,278 since Wednesday and currently stood at 7,15,812.
The front-line medics were able to save 79,415 more lives, taking the total recovery count till now to 68,74,518 which is 89.20 per cent of the caseload.
According to Indian Council of Medical Research, 14,69,984 samples were tested on Wednesday, taking to 9,86,70,363 the tally.
In Hyderabad, veteran Telangana statesman, Nayini Reddy, 86, died in a corporate hospital, a month after he recovered from the infection.
The senior Telangana Rashtriya Samiti leader had served in the YS Rajasekhara Reddy and K Chandrasekhar Rao Cabinets.
More UNI RP SB 1400