Coronavirus LIVE: India records 256,947 new cases, Delhi under lockdown

Coronavirus live updates: India reported a slight decline of 256,947 in the number of fresh coronavirus (Covid-19) cases on Tuesday, Worldometer showed this morning. With this, India's Covid tally has shot up to 15,314,714 cases. India, however, reported the highest-ever single-day spike in Covid-related deaths with 1,757 fatalities. The death toll from the deadly infection stands at 180,550. The country now has over 2 million active cases.

The Health Department stated that Maharashtra witnessed a dip in its daily Covid-19 count by recording 58,924 fresh infections; a day after reporting the highest number of 68,631 cases on Sunday.However, 351 people succumbed to the deadly virus in the last 24 hours. D.elhi recorded 240 deaths in the past 24 hours, much higher than the 161 reported a day earlier. The city saw 23,686 cases in a day. The city is facing an extreme crunch of hospital beds, especially ventilators and ICU beds. Delhi currently has 19,499 beds reserved for Covid patients. Of these, only 3,303 are vacant. Out of the 1,439 ventilator beds, only 26 are vacant and of the 2,969 ICU beds without ventilators, only 32 are vacant. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, while announcing a week-long lockdown in the city, said that Delhi’s capacity to take in more patients was nearly over.

The five most affected states by total cases are Maharashtra (3,898,262), Kerala (1,239,424), Karnataka (1,161,065), Tamil Nadu (991,451), and Andhra Pradesh (962,037).

World coronavirus update: Coronavirus cases rise unabated across the globe with 142,685,761 infected by the deadly contagion. While 121,399,094 have recovered, 3,042,834 have died so far. The US remains the worst-hit country with 32,149,181, followed by India, Brazil, France and Russia. However, in the past seven days, India has added the highest number of fresh cases at 1,532,388, followed by the US (493,159) and Brazil (460,528).