COVID-19: India adds less than 50,000 fresh infections for five straight days

Active COVID-19 cases in India drop below 6 lakh with the country adding less than 50,000 fresh infections for five straight days.

With India reporting 48,648 cases in the last 24 hours, the total number of coronavirus cases rose to 80.88 lakh on Friday. The country has been recording less than 50,000 infections for the last five days and the active cases have fallen below the six lakh mark, to a level seen in the first week of August. Also, the total number of fatalities has reached 1.21 lakh, 5,94,386 are active cases and 73,73,375 people have recovered.

The slower pace of daily infections and an improved recovery rate have led to a fairly drastic decline in active cases.

The Maharashtra government on Thursday extended the lockdown till November 30 without allowing any new activities.

Union Health Ministry has said, “India has exponentially scaled up its testing capacity from one in January to more than 10.65 cr at present. The very high testing has resulted in a continuously falling positivity rate. It is 7.54% presently.”

A total number of 10,77,28,088 samples were tested for COVID-19 on October 29. Of these, 11,64,648 samples were tested on Thursday, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Globally, over 44 million people have been infected worldwide till now. More than one million have succumbed to the virus. The United States continues to be the worst-affected followed by India and Brazil.