India registers over 2.8 lakh fresh COVID cases on Wednesday

Registering a spike of more than 18% on the daily COVID figures of the previous day, India reported 2,82,970 fresh cases of coronavirus on Wednesday. According to the press release issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, adding the cases detected on January 18, the active caseload of the country has now climbed to 18,31,000 cases.

Notably, this is the highest figure the country has seen in the last 232 days as 18,95,520 active cases were reported on May 31, 2021. Read on to know more about the status of coronavirus infection in India.

Over 70.74 crore tests conducted in India, so far

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As per the data, the active cases at present make 4.83% of the total case tally of the country including cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Apart from breaching the 2.5 lakh mark, 441 causalities were also marked on the same day across India. With this, the cumulative death toll of the country stands at 4,87,202 nearing the 5-lakh mark. While the daily positivity rate has declined to 15.13%, amid the sudden spike, the weekly positivity rate has climbed to 15.53% now.

With a recovery rate of 93.88%, 1,88,157 patients marked their recovery on Wednesday, taking the total tally to 3,55,83,039 cases in India. Notably, more than 70.74 crore tests have been conducted across the country ever since the outbreak of the pandemic. Out of these, 18,69,642 tests were conducted in the country on Wednesday alone.

Omicron in India

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On Wednesday, the tally of Omicron cases in the country also witnessed an increase of 0.79% from Tuesday by reaching a total of 8,961 cases. According to the experts, although it is not possible to conduct genome sequencing of every sample the third wave is largely triggered by the Omicron variant of coronavirus.

The vaccination coverage against COVID in the country has reached a total of 158.8 crores, as of Wednesday morning. As per the data available on CoWIN, more than 76 lakh vaccine doses have been administered in India in the last 24 hours. Interestingly, within a record time of 15 days, half of the entire eligible population under the age group of 15-17 have received at least a single dose of vaccine in India.

-with inputs from IANS