India’s Omicron tally mounts to 1,270; daily Covid-19 cases see another spike at 16,764

December 31, 2021 39 Views No Comment

New Delhi, December 31 (agencies) The health ministry said there were 1,270 cases of Omicron detected so far from 23 states and Union territories, adding 374 of those patients have been discharged.

India’s Omicron count crossed the 1,000-mark as the highly-mutated variant of the coronavirus continues to spread at an alarming rate across the country, according to the Union ministry of health and family welfare on Friday.

The health ministry said there were 1,270 cases of Omicron detected so far from 23 states and Union territories, adding 374 of those patients have been discharged.

Maharashtra and Delhi are leading the Omicron tally and have reported 450 and 320 cases respectively. On Thursday night, Bihar became the latest state to report a case of the new variant.

Meanwhile, India’s daily tally of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) also continued to spike for a third consecutive day after 16,764 cases were recorded in the last 24 hours, pushing the caseload to 34,838,804, according to the health ministry’s update.

More than 7,500 patients recovered and 220 succumbed to the viral disease, taking the cumulative count of recoveries and deaths to 34,266,363 and 481,080 respectively. Active cases of Covid-19 are up by nearly 9,000 and stand at 91,361, the health ministry also said.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 1,250,837 samples were tested for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours and the total number has climbed to 677,878,255.

The country’s vaccination coverage has exceeded 1.44 billion with 6,665,290 doses administered in the last 24 hours. The health ministry informed on Thursday that 90 per cent of the adult population has been inoculated with the first dose.

More than 1.5 billion vaccine doses have been provided to states and Union Territories (UTs) so far through the Centre’s free of cost channel and direct state procurement category, the ministry said on Friday.

It also added that nearly 170 million balance and unutilised vaccine doses are still available with the states and UTs to be administered.