Coronavirus / India records world's highest-ever daily coronavirus cases for 2nd day in a row

New Delhi: India reported 414,188 fresh infections of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and 3,915 deaths due to the virus on Friday, according to the Union health ministry dashboard at 8am. With this, the country's cumulative infections went up to 21,491,598 and the toll was pushed to 234,083.

Meanwhile, 17,612,351 people have recovered from the disease till date and the country has 36,451,64 active cases. This means that the Covid-19 recovery rate has dropped to 81.95 per cent and the active cases comprise 16.96 per cent of the total infections, according to the health ministry.

As many as 16,49,73,058 people have been vaccinated against the virus, according to the health ministry, with 23,70,298 of them being inoculated in the last 24 hours.

The huge spike in deaths and cases comes amid various states including Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan imposing complete lockdowns and other states tightening restrictions in order to curb the spread of the virus.

Kerala, which reported 42,464 new infections on Thursday, imposed an eight-day lockdown from Saturday. “The entire state of Kerala will be under lockdown from 6am on 8 May to 16 May. This is in the background of a strong 2nd wave of #COVID19,” chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan tweeted.

In Madhya Pradesh, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan told people to “close down everything” till May 15. The state had reported 12,421 fresh cases and 86 fatalities on Thursday.

The Rajasthan government has imposed a lockdown in the state from May 10 to May 24.

The highly virulent virus has infected more than 156 million and killed over 3 million people around the world, according to the real-time statistics provider website Worldometers. India is leading the world's daily infection count with over 4 lakh new cases reported for two days in a row. On Thursday, 412,262 fresh Covid-19 cases had pushed India's infection tally to over 21 million.