Fresh Covid cases dip to 2.59 lakh, deaths still close to 4,000

NEW DELHI: Daily cases of Covid-19 in India continued to fall but deaths remained high, with close to 4,000 fatalities recorded in the country again on Thursday.
India reported 2,59,410 fresh cases, a drop from over 2.76 lakh recorded on the previous day, as per TOI’s Covid database collated from state government figures. The sevenday average of daily cases has now fallen steadily for the past 12 days. It stood at 2,83,676, down 27% from the peak of 3,91,263 recorded on May 8.
Daily deaths, however, have hovered around the 4,000 mark. India recorded 3,968 fatalities on Thursday, a slight increase from the previous day’s toll of 3,882. On Wednesday, many media houses announced that India’s daily toll on the previous day had overtaken the US record for the highest singleday deaths from Covid in the world. This was based on earlier deaths added to the cumulative toll by Maharashtra as part of the data reconciliation process. Even if the earlier deaths are not counted, the seven-day average of daily fatalities on Thursday stood close to the 4,000 mark at 3,946.
This was close to the peak of 4,040 recorded on May 16, indicating that the daily Covid death toll in the country was yet to decline. Meanwhile, active cases in the country fell by more than a lakh on Thursday. The count now is to just over 30 lakh. On Thursday, Tamil Nadu, with 397 fatalities recorded in the last 24 hours, and Bengal(162) reported their highest single-day death toll till date.