India records 86,961 Covid-19 cases, lowest since Sept 16.

India recorded 86,961 cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), lowest in six days, and 1,130 deaths between Sunday and Monday morning, according to the Union health ministry on Monday. The country’s tally to rose to 5,487,580 and the death toll to 87,882, data showed at 8am.

There are 1,003,299 active cases of the coronavirus disease and 4,396,399 recoveries after 93,356 patients were cured and discharged across the country in the last 24 hours. This takes India’s recovery rate to 80.11%.

The health ministry has said India, the second worst-hit country, has the highest number of recovered Covid-19 patients globally, constituting 19% of the total recoveries across the world. “India occupies the top position in the world in terms of total recoveries. More than 43 lakh have recovered. India’s recoveries constitute 19% of the total global recoveries,” the ministry said.

The Indian Council of Medical Reasearch is actively exploring saliva-based test for detection of Covid-19 and asserted that no significant or drastic mutation in strains of Sars-CoV-2, has been found in India till now.

ICMR has been conducting large-scale sequencing of nationally representative strains of Sars-CoV-2 virus collected for several months over different time-points. He added that detailed results on mutations and evolution of the virus will be available in early October.

Globally, there are more than and 959,332 people have died, according to the coronavirus tracker of Johns Hopkins University.