India crossed the grim milestone of 5 lakh COVID-19 deaths, becoming the third country in the world to do so after the US and Brazil.
India took 217 days to reach 5 lakh deaths from 4 lakh recorded on July 1 last year. The country was hit by a devastating second wave in April-May last year. India’s death toll had crossed three lakh-mark on May 23 and two lakh-mark on April 27. The death toll went past one lakh on October 2, 2020.
The total death count has climbed to 5,00,055 with 1,072 daily fatalities, Union Health Ministry data updated at 8 am on Saturday stated.
With over 9.2 lakh deaths, US has the highest number of fatalities due to the infection followed by Brazil with over 6.3 lakh, according to the Worl-dometers, which has been compiling global COVID-19 data.
India presently is facing a third wave of COVID driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant. However, according to experts, cases are mostly mild this in comparison to the second wave. The government on February 03 said the pandemic situa-tion has improved and even though there are states and districts of concern, overall there is a contrac-tion in the spread of COVID-19 infection.
On Thursday, 16.1 lakh tests were conducted (the results for which were made available on Fri-day).
The test positivity rate (TPR, the number of cases detected per 100 tests) was 8.1%.
As of Friday, 93.2% of the eligible population has been vaccinated with at least one dose, while 71.3% have received both doses. In the 15-17 age cohort, 72% of the population have received their first dose.
Altogether, 94.9 crore first doses, 72.6 crore second doses, and 1.3 crore booster doses have been administered across India.—INP
