Covid-19 India Updates: Nearly 40,000 New Cases; More Than 400 Deaths In A Day

India continued to report nearly 40,000 new cases of Covid-19 as the world's second most populous nation braces for the third wave of the pandemic.

More Than 39,000 people tested positive for the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry's update as of 8:00 a.m. on July 26. Recoveries during the period were almost as high as fresh cases, keeping the active case load largely unchanged.

Key Coronavirus Data

• Total confirmed cases: 3,14,11,262

• Total number of active cases: 4,11,189

• Total patients cured/discharged/migrated: 3,05,79,106

• Total deaths: 4,20,967

• Number of fresh cases in last 24 hours: 39,361

• Number of recoveries in a day: 35,968

• Deaths recorded in a day: 416

India reported more than 400 deaths in a day with the overall confirmed toll at more than 4.2 lakh. But the nation's actual death toll from Covid-19 could range between 1.3 million (13 lakh) to a staggering 5 million (50 lakh), if you go by numbers derived from research models and local authority data.

Even by the most conservative estimate, the real toll of the pandemic has been vastly underestimated because of a combination of under-counting, a backlog in the civil registration system and a lack of testing leading to Covid deaths being classified under other conditions like heart disease.