India witnesses dip in fresh COVID-19 cases but new fatalities increase in last 24 hours

India has so far recorded over 2.70 lakh coronavirus-related fatalities.

Photo: Reuters

New Delhi: India witnessed a dip in fresh COVID-19 cases but new deaths increased in the last 24 hours, as per the data released by Union Health Ministry on Sunday (May 16, 2021) morning. 

There were 3,11,170 new COVID-19 cases and 4,077 deaths in the last 24 hours in India. 

So far, the country has recorded a total of 2,46,84,077 coronavirus infections, of which, 2,07,95,335 people have recovered, while 2,70,284 have died of the fatal virus. There are still 36,18,458 active cases in India.

Earlier on Saturday, there were 3.26 lakh new infections, besides 3,890 coronavirus-related deaths. 

The second wave of coronavirus in India has resulted in Prime Minister Narendra Modi constantly reviewing the situation with the latest high-level meeting taking place on Saturday. During the meeting, PM Modi was briefed that COVID-19 testing has gone up rapidly in the country, from around 50 lakh tests per week in early March to around 1.3 crore tests per week now. Officials also informed the Prime Minister about the gradually decreasing test positivity rate and increasing recovery rate. 

PM Modi told the officials that localised containment strategies are the need of the hour especially for states where TPR in districts is high. He instructed that testing needs to be scaled up further, with the use of both RT-PCR and Rapid Tests, especially in areas with high test positivity rates. 

PM Modi said that states should be encouraged to report their numbers transparently without any pressure of high numbers showing adversely on their efforts and asked for augmentation of healthcare resources in rural areas to focus on door to door testing & surveillance. 

Meanwhile, the cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country has crossed 18.21 crore. The total includes over 96.42 lakh Healthcare Workers (HCWs) who have taken the 1st dose and 66.40 lakh HCWs who have taken the 2nd dose. 

Over 1.44 crore Frontline Workers (FLWs) have also taken the first dose, while 81.86 lakh FLWs have taken the second vaccine shot. 

Around 5.71 crore people in the 45-60 age group have taken the first dose, while 90.63 lakh have taken the second shot. 5.44 crore people above 60 years have been administered the first dose and 1.77 crores have got the second dose. Around 48.21 lakh people in the 18-44 age group have received the first shot.