India once again registers 100,000 new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours

A total of 115,736 new COVID-19 cases were registered in the past 24 hours in India, said official data released by the federal health ministry on Wednesday, reported Xinhua.

The latest single-day spike, highest so far, took the total tally to 12,801,785.

This is the second time within this week when more than 100,000 new COVID-19 cases were recorded in India. Earlier, 103,558 new cases were reported on Monday.

Besides, as many as 630 deaths took place due to the pandemic since Tuesday morning, taking the total death toll to 166,177, revealed the ministry's data.

There are still 843,473 active cases in the country, while 11,792,135 people have been discharged so far from hospitals after medical treatment.

There was an increase of 55,250 active cases during the previous 24 hours, out of which a maximum of 20,916 active cases were reported from the south-western state of Maharashtra.

The number of daily active cases has been on the rise over the past few days, as another wave of COVID-19 looms large in India.

In January the number of daily cases in the country had come down to below-10,000. Between January 25-26, 9,102 new cases were reported, which was the lowest in the previous 237 days. Prior to that, the lowest number of daily new cases were 9,304 registered on June 4, 2020.

January 16 was a crucial day in India's fight against the pandemic as the nationwide vaccination drive was kicked off from the day. So far over 87 million people (87,077,474) have been vaccinated across the country.

Meanwhile, the federal government has ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities across the country, as over 251 million tests have been conducted so far.

As many as 251,439,598 tests were conducted till Tuesday, out of which 1,208,329 tests were conducted on Tuesday alone, said the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Wednesday.

The national capital Delhi, which has been one of the most COVID-19 affected places in the country, witnessed as many as 5,100 new cases and 17 deaths through Tuesday.

So far 11,113 people have died in the national capital due to COVID-19, confirmed Delhi's health department.

Two types of vaccines are being administered to the people in India. While the "Covishield" vaccine, made by Serum Institute of India, was supplied to all states, the "Covaxin" vaccine, made by Bharat Biotech International Limited, was supplied to 12 states.