Coronavirus News Highlights: India reported its highest-ever single-day spike of COVID-19 cases with over 2.73 lakh new cases and more than 1,600 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Health Ministry on Monday. In the last 24 hours, 1,619 COVID-related deaths

were reported in the country taking the death toll to 1,78,769. As many as 2,73,810 new COVID-19 cases have been reported in India in the last 24 hours. With this, the total number of cases has gone up to 1,50,61,919. The active number of cases in the country stands at 19,29,329. In the last 24 hours, 1,44,178 people recovered from the disease. With this, the total recoveries reached 1,29,53,821. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, 13,56,133 samples were tested on Monday. And, as many as 26,78,94,549 samples have been tested across the country till April 18.

India's regulator has granted restricted emergency use approval for three vaccines — Covishield, Covaxin and Sputnik V. All persons above the age of 45 are eligible to get vaccinated. Globally, more than 14.04 crore people have been infected by the novel coronavirus and 30.08 lakh have died so far, as per the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre.

Coronavirus News Highlights: With 240 deaths, Delhi reports highest single-day COVID-19 fatality count

Coronavirus News Highlights: Struggling to contain the huge COVID-19 surge, Maharashtraon declared six states, including the national capital and the NCR region, as the places of "sensitive origin" in a bid to stop the "influx of other variants of coronavirus"from other locations.