Covid deaths surged in the country with five major states reporting their highest daily toll from the pandemic on Tuesday even as the count of fresh cases rose again after dipping for three days in a row.
India recorded 3,460 deaths in the last 24 hours, with data from Delhi not been released till way past midnight for the first time this year. The capital had recorded more than 400 deaths each in the previous two days. The highest daily death toll from the pandemic was 3,728 reported on Saturday.
Even without data from Delhi, the day’s case count had shot past Monday’s count of 3.56 lakh, with 3,62,577 new infections reported in the country. On Monday, the capital had logged 18,043 fresh cases. Daily cases have remained higher than 3.5 lakh for the last eight days, with a peak of 4,02,351 recorded on April 30.
On Tuesday, at least five big states reported their highest daily fatalities— UP, where 352 deaths were reported, Karnataka (292), Punjab (173), Haryana (153) and Bengal (107). Deaths surged to 891 in Maharashtra, up from 567 the previous day, while the toll remained high in Chhattisgarh (210), Rajasthan (154), Tamil Nadu (144), Jharkhand (132) and Gujarat (131). In all, 13 states reported 100-plus deaths in the last 24 hours.
The case fatality rate in the past week ending Monday had shown a 22% rise from the CFR in the previous seven days. On Tuesday, nine states reported their highest daily cases,led by Tamil Nadu, where 21,228 fresh infections were recorded.
The other states were Bengal (17,639), Haryana (15,786), Punjab(7,601),Uttarakhand(7,028), J&K(4,650), Himachal Pradesh (3,824), Manipur (433) and Nagaland (266). On the positive side,cases appeared to be gradually declining in Maharashtra, UP and Madhya Pradesh.
