India on Friday registered its highest single-day spike in the number of coronavirus deaths. With 77 deaths in the last 24 hours, health ministry data said, the total reached 1,152.
The number of coronavirus cases in the country on Friday breached the 35,000-mark. The total now stands at 35,365. The centre’s data said 9,065 people have been cured of the virus so far.
The centre on Thursday said the doubling rate of the coronavirus cases had improved to 11 days.
Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said 1,993 new cases of coronavirus were reported in the country.
The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 25,148. “Thus, around 25.63 per cent patients have recovered so far,” a health ministry official told news agency PTI.
Since Thursday evening, 27 deaths were reported from Maharashtra, 17 from Gujarat, 11 from West Bengal, seven each from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, three from Delhi, two from Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and one from Karnataka, the government said.
Of the 1,152 deaths, Maharashtra tops the tally with 459 fatalities, followed by Gujarat at 214, Madhya Pradesh at 137, Delhi at 59, Rajasthan at 58, Uttar Pradesh at 41 and West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh at 33 each.
The death number reached 27 in Tamil Nadu, 26 in Telangana, while Karnataka has reported 22 deaths. Punjab has registered 19 fatalities so far. The disease has claimed eight lives in Jammu and Kashmir, four in Kerala while Jharkhand and Haryana have recorded three COVID-19 deaths each.
Bihar has reported two deaths, while Meghalaya, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and Assam have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry data.
“Our figures are being reconciled with the ICMR,” the ministry said on its website adding, ” 393 cases are being assigned to states for contact tracing.”
The government on Friday announced that the ongoing nationwide coronavirus lockdown will be extended by two weeks after May 4. The home ministry has also issued new guidelines to regulate different activities in this period, based on the risk profiling of the districts of the country into red (hotspot), green and orange zones.
There will be considerable relaxations in the districts falling in the Green and Orange Zones, the government said.
