NEW DELHI: The total number of coronavirus cases in India reached 24,530 on Saturday, including foreign nationals, with 19,032 active cases, while the death toll has increased to 780, according to John Hopkins University.
However the Health Ministry in its daily update said of the 775 deaths, the highest — 301 — was reported from Maharashtra, followed by Gujarat with 127 fatalities.
“A total of 5,062 patients have been cured and discharged,” the Ministry said.
Maharashtra remained the worst hit state with total number of positive cases rising to 6,817, followed by Gujarat at 2,815 cases, Delhi at 2,514 cases and Rajasthan at 2,034 cases, according to the data.
On Friday, India recorded its highest single-day rise in Covid-19 cases. The government, however, said the country had been saved from going into Stage 3 (community transmission stage) while asserting the disease was under control and transmission was limited to pockets with two spells of the national lockdown.
“Without the lockdown, we would have gone beyond one lakh cases by today. We are at 23,000. Lockdown was a timely decision that has prevented cases from rising exponentially and mortality to rise beyond control,” said VK Paul, chairman of the Covid-19 empowered group on emergency medical response.
Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said: “The positive cases are not rising more than 4 per cent… We were all worried if we are in Stage 3, but we have been able to save the country largely from going into Stage 3.”
The national case count touched 23,452, recording a spike of 1,752 cases in a single day — the highest 24-hour rise since the first case on January 30. So far, 723 persons have died of the infection with 37 deaths in a single day since yesterday.
Recoveries continue to improve and 4,813 patients have been discharged (491 in a day), taking the national cure rate to 20.52 per cent.
India’s rate of doubling of the disease is increasing steadily with infections taking much longer to grow as compared to the pre-lockdown time. Government data shows cases were doubling every 5.2 days in the first week of lockdown (March 24 to 31), but the last week (April 14 to 21) cases have doubled over 8.6 days.