With the biggest single-day spike of 55,079 corona virus cases, an incremental growth of 5,079 over the previous day’s 50,000 cases, India looks set to breach the 1,00,000 daily count of corona virus affected in a week’s time.
With the latest projections that the pandemic would peak in September India is also likely to end up as the worst by the time the Covid-19 pandemic starts subsiding India suggest by the end of October.
With this latest spike, the total cases in the country stand at 16,38,871. Among these cases 5,45,318 are active. A total of 10,57,806 patients have been cured/discharged/migrated.
779 deaths due to Covid-19 have been reported in the country in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 35,747.
As per the union health ministry, Maharashtra has a total of 1,48,454 active cases and recorded 14,729 deaths due to Covid-19. Tamil Nadu has a total of 57,962 active cases while 3,838 deaths were reported in the state.
“A total of 16,38,871 positive cases have been recorded in the country so far, including 5,45,318 active cases, 10,57,806 who have been cured/discharged and 35,747 deaths,” the ministry of health and family welfare said on Friday.
The health ministry said more than 6 lakh tests were conducted across the country in the past 24 hours.
The spike comes two days after the union ministry of home affairs announced further relaxations in the lockdown guidelines.
“The union ministry of health and family welfare continues to implement the strategy of comprehensive testing, tracking and treatment to effectively tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. The objective is to raise the testing capacity to 10 lakh tests per day in the medium term,” the ministry said.
Officer on Special Duty in the health ministry Rajesh Bhushan on Thursday said that given the size of India’s population, obtaining herd immunity “cannot be a strategic choice or option”
“In a country with the size of the population like India, herd immunity cannot be a strategic choice or option. It can only be an outcome, and that too at a very high cost as it means lakhs of people would have to be infected, get hospitalised and many would die in the process. Are we approaching herd immunity? The health ministry believes it is still far away and in the future. For now, we have to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour like wearing masks, avoiding gatherings, following hand hygiene and maintaining ‘do gaz ki doori’ (maintaining distance of two yards),” he said.