NEW DELHI: The number of novel coronavirus infections saw the biggest spike in India with 6,654 new cases in the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 1,25,101 on Saturday, while the death toll due to the pandemic rose to 3,720 after 137 more fatalities, the Union Health Ministry said.
The active cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) rose to 69,597, while 51,783 people have recovered and a patient has migrated, according to the ministry bulletin.
Of the 137 new deaths, 63 were in Maharashtra, 29 in Gujarat, 14 each from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, six from West Bengal, four from Tamil Nadu, two each from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, and one from Haryana.
On Friday, the ministry said around 80 per cent of active cases reported till Thursday were in just five states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. Over 90 per cent are in 10 states, he said stressing that in the last two months the number of cases have risen in large numbers in other countries.
As far as fatalities were concerned, over 80 per cent of the deaths are in five states — Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Delhi and around 95 per cent of the deaths are in 10 states.
They also said after April 4 there was a steep decline for the next 15-20 days and the case growth per cent came down to 5.5 till May 13 from 15-22 per cent earlier as the lockdown put a brake on the speed of increase of cases.
The number of COVID-19 cases would have risen exponentially had the lockdown not been implemented, it said, adding that the doubling time of the novel coronavirus cases now stands at 13.3 days as against 3.4 days since the lockdown was imposed.