India records lowest daily new COVID-19 cases in 5 months

New Delhi: In a significant achievement in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, India on Tuesday recorded 26,567 new cases in the last 24 hours for the first time after nearly five months, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Affairs.

It said India's steady trend of registering dipping active cases is continuing with a high number of COVID-19 patients recovering every day and the sustained fall in the mortality rate. According to the Ministry, new daily cases were at 26,506 last on July 10.

"The active cases have drastically declined to 3.83 lakh. The total positive cases of the country are 3,83,866 and comprise (3.96 per cent) of the total cases. 39,045 new recoveries were registered during the last 24 hours. It has led to a net decline of 12,863 cases from the total active caseload in the last 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement.

It said, in another achievement, the country's active caseload has fallen under the 4 per cent mark on Tuesday. New recoveries outnumbering the daily new cases have also improved the recovery rate to 94.59 per cent today, the statement said.

The statement said the total recovered cases stand at 91,78,946 today and added that 76.31 per cent of the new recovered cases are contributed by 10 states and Union Territories.

"With 7,345 persons recovering from COVID, Maharashtra has recorded the maximum number of recoveries. Kerala has registered another 4,705 daily recoveries while Delhi has reported 3,818 new recoveries in the past 24 hours," the statement said.

"Kerala has reported 3,272 cases in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra recorded 3,075 new cases while West Bengal has registered 2,214 new cases yesterday. 75.58 per cent of the 385 case fatalities reported in the past 24 hours are from Ten States/UTs," it added.

The statement said 16.36 per cent of new fatalities were from Delhi, which reported 63 deaths, while West Bengal saw a fatality count of 48 and Maharashtra reported 40 new deaths.

Asserting that there is a steady decline in the number of daily deaths recorded in the country, it said less than 400 new deaths were recorded in the country in the last 24 hours.