After days of declining trend in COVID cases, India sees hike with 10,542 new infections

After six days of a nationwide falling trend in COVID cases, India reported a hike on Wednesday with 10,542 new infections, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The country had seen a declining graph in the past five days from April 14 to April 18 when 11,109 and 7,633 cases were reported respectively. India had recorded 9,111 on April 17, 10,093 on April 16, and 10,753 on April 15.

According to the Union Health Ministry, the country's active cases increased to 63,562 which was 61,233 yesterday. As many as 8,175 COVID patients recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours taking the total number of recoveries to 4,42,50,649.

The recovery rate stands at 98.67 per cent. The daily case positivity rate increased from 3.62 per cent on Tuesday to 4.39 per cent today, while the weekly positivity rate increased to 5.14 today from 5.04 yesterday.

A total of 220.66 crore COVID vaccine doses have been administered in the country so far. "92.46 crore total Tests conducted so far; 2,40,014 tests conducted in the last 24 hours," the Ministry said.

Meanwhile, medical experts have warned that the new XBB1.16 variant is able to evade the immune system of people and the upcoming four weeks are very crucial. Former director of AIIMS, Delhi, Dr Randeep Guleria has said while the country was seeing a fresh surge in Covid-19 infections, the situation isn't one to induce panic.

"Covid-19 cases have been on the rise across the country. But the majority of the infections are mild. The rate of hospitalisation hasn't gone up either. It's not a panic-like situation yet," Guleria told ANI.