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India recorded a milestone on the vaccination front on Friday with the number of single-day doses touching a new high of 20.54 lakh. However, there was bad news on the new cases front, which climbed to 24,882, the highest single-day spike so far this year, according to Health Ministry.
Second wave
The continuing rise in daily new cases this week has raised fears of a second wave of the pandemic.
Health authorities are focussed on seven States — Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh — which cumulatively accounted for 87.72 per cent of the new cases in the last 24 hours.
Maharashtra, on Friday, reported 15,817 new cases, breaching the 15,000-mark for the first time in 162 days, according to the State’s health department. This was nearly double the March 1 level of 8,293 new cases.
While Kerala saw 1,780 new cases on Friday, Punjab reported 1,408 new cases, nearly thrice the March 1 level of 579 cases.
The eight States where the daily new cases have been rising are Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka and Haryana.
What is also worrying is that India’s active caseload at 2.02 lakh as on Friday surpassed the 2-lakh mark for the first time since January 19.
States like Telangana have upped their testing levels, given that neighbouring Maharashtra is now reporting a sharp surge in cases.
Milestone
On Friday, as many as 20,53,537 doses were administered; 16,39,663 were given the first jab, 4,13,874 were given the second dose.
This vaccination performance has bettered Monday’s count at 20.20 lakh doses.
As many as 8 States constituted 74 per cent of 20,53,537 doses administered in the last 24 hours. Uttar Pradesh has topped the list with more than 3.3-lakh vaccine doses. The other seven States are Karnataka, Kerala, Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Maharashtra.
Cumulatively since January 16 when the vaccination drive began, 2.82-crore (2,82,18,457) vaccine doses have been given, as per provisional data till 7 am on Saturday, the Health Ministry said.
(With inputs from Hyderabad Bureau)
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