India reports less than 21K new Coronavirus cases in last 24 hours

New Delhi: With 20,550 new coronavirus infections and 286 deaths in the past 24 hours, India's overall tally stood at 1,02,44,853 on Wednesday, while the death toll touched 1,48,439, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.

Till now, 9,83,4141 have recovered. Currently, there are 2,62,272 active cases. The recovery rate stands at 95.99 per cent while the fatality rate is 1.45 as per cent.

Covid-19 has hit men harder than women in India, where 70 per cent of the approximately 1.47 lakh people who died since the national outbreak in January were male, the ministry has announced.

A total of 17,09,22,030 samples have been tested for Covid-19 till now. Of these, 11,20,281 samples were tested on Tuesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit state till date. Over 70 per cent of the daily new cases are being reported by 10 states and union territory -- Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh (in random order).

India has recorded 15 more cases of the new UK coronavirus mutant strain, taking total number of such cases to 21, data from the Union Health Ministry and state departments showed on Wednesday.

Of the 20 cases, eight have been registered at National Centre for Disease Control in Delhi, 7 at National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences in Bangalore, two at Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad.

A two-year-old in Meerut, who just returned with her parents from the UK. The child is in an isolation ward with her parents at Meerut's Subharti Medical College. The parents have tested positive for Covid, but not the new strain.

Then there is one each who has been logged at National Institute of Biomedical Genomics near Kolkata, National Institute of Virology in Pune and CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in Delhi.