Active coronavirus cases in India continued to decline at a time when the country is going through one of the largest innoculation drives with over 37 lakh healthcare workers vaccinated.
India added 11,427 fresh cases in 24 hours, taking the total tally to more than 1.07 crore in the world’s second-worst infected country, according to the Health Ministry’s update as of 8 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2021. This includes 1.54 lakh deaths and 1.04 crore patients who have recovered.
The nation with a population of 1.3 billion is only behind the U.S. in the number of confirmed infections.
New cases have been falling and remained below 20,000 since Jan. 7, 2021. The slower pace of daily infections and an improved recovery rate pushed active cases in India below the 2-lakh-mark. That’s just 1.57% of the total caseload. India’s active cases had crossed 10 lakh in mid-September.
Key figures:
- Total confirmed cases: 10757610
- Total number of active cases: 168235
- Total patients cured/discharged/migrated: 10434983
- Total deaths: 154392
- Number of fresh cases in last 24 hours: 11427
- One-day recoveries: 11858
- One-day deaths: 118
This comes a day after the Union Budget for financial year 2021-22 which set aside Rs 35,000 crore for Covid-19 vaccine expenditure. The government’s spend on healthcare overall is also projected to increase 137% from the previous budget, highlighting the focus on better facilities and medical infrastructure.
Covid relief measures so far have resulted in rise in expenditure to Rs 34.50 lakh crore in the current fiscal as against Rs 30.42 lakh crore budgeted a year back, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday.
Read more on global virus updates here.