India records lowest daily rise virus cases in 6 months

NEW DELHI

India on Sunday recorded 18,732 new coronavirus cases, the lowest in nearly six months, the country’s Health Ministry data showed.

According to a health bulletin released on Sunday morning, the total number of cases in India rose to 10.18 million.

The country registered 279 new deaths over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities to 147,622. It was for the second consecutive day that the daily deaths remained below 300.

“India has scaled a significant peak in the fight against the global pandemic. Daily new caseload dropped below 19,000 after 6 months,” a Health Ministry statement said.

Noting that the country has reported a trend of “sustained decrease in the number of active cases,” the statement said that the present active caseload consists of just 2.74% of India’s total positive cases.

The ministry said 76.52% of the new cases are concentrated in 10 states and union territories.

Last week, the total number of coronavirus cases in the country crossed 10 million mark.

Three vaccine manufacturing companies have so far applied for emergency use of COVID-19 vaccine in India. The application is still in process.