India’s active Covid-19 caseload fell below the 1 lakh mark on Wednesday after first breaching the barrier in June 2020. This shows sustained containment of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country in recent months.
The active Covid-19 caseload was at 99,763 on Thursday morning, showing an increase of 740 cases over Wednesday’s 99,023. Active caseload is the actual pressure on the country health infrastructure at any given point in time.
The last time the active caseload was below 1 lakh was on June 1 last year, when India had 96,990 ‘currently infected’ individuals in isolation in hospitals and at homes. The 1 lakh barrier was breached on June 2, 2020, when the country was in the phase of gradual lifting of lockdown that was enforced on March 25 to mitigate the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Active Covid-19 cases thereafter kept rising till September 19, when the number of ‘currently infected’ persons stood at 10,11,104. The first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic appeared to be waning in the following weeks.
The trend of general decline in the Covid-19 cases in India continued till February this year. An early revival of the pandemic wave could be noticed in the second half of March. It blew up into a massive second wave of pandemic in India over April and May.
During the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the daily cases went past 4 lakh. The Delta variant detected in December 2020 was found to be responsible for the massive surge in Covid-19 cases that pushed the active caseload in India to over 37 lakh on May 07 this year, according to Worldometer.
The impact of the second wave was so big that several states continued to report a high number of daily infections despite the pandemic showing a nationwide retreat.
However, active Covid-19 cases have come down below 1 lakh at a time when another new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, is posing a fresh challenge. Named Omicron, the newly detected variant is said to be more transmissible than the Delta variant. The severity of illness caused by the Omicron variant is still being studied by scientists.
This is the first time that the active Covid-19 cases in India have remained below the 1 lakh mark for two consecutive days after going past that number in June 2020.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday said that the active cases account for just 0.29 per cent of total cases the lowest since March 2020. Overall, 9,765 fresh Covid-19 cases were reported in India on Wednesday. During the 24-hour period, 8,548 people were declared ‘recovered’ from Covid-19.
The daily rise in fresh coronavirus infections has been below 20,000 for 55 days. India has seen less than 50,000 daily cases for 157 consecutive days as of Thursday.
The national Covid-19 recovery rate has improved to 98.35 per cent the highest since March 2020, the ministry said. The daily positivity report has remained below two per cent for the 59 days with the weekly positivity rate staying below one per cent for the 18 days.