India sees slight decline in new COVID-19 cases, 4,000 deaths in past 24 hours

India on Friday witnessed a slight decline in new cases of coronavirus infection in the country in the last 24 hours with 3,43,144 people testing positive.

NEW DELHI: India on Friday witnessed a slight decline in new cases of coronavirus infections in the country with 3,43,144 people testing positive in the last 24 hours.

According to the data released by the Union Health Ministry on Friday, India reported 3,43,144 new COVID-19 cases, 3,44,776 discharges and a total of 4,000 deaths in the last 24 hours.

The number of new cases stood at 3,62,727 on Thursday morning.

With the fresh infections, the cumulative Covid-19 caseload in India has reached 2,40,46,809.

India's active cases are now above 37 lakh. So far, the nation has seen over 2.40 crore infections since the beginning of the pandemic and over 2 crore people have recovered from the disease so far.

Nine states and UT -- Kerala, Odisha, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Assam, and Manipur -- are continuing to show an increasing trend in daily coronavirus cases, the ministry said on Thursday.

On the other hand, nine states -- Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Goa, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand, Jammu, and Kashmir, and Ladakh -- have shown a decline in daily new cases in the past one week.

India has so far tested 31,13,24,100 samples for Covid-19 until now, said the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Out of these, 18,75,515 samples were tested on Thursday. The country has so far administered 17,92,98,584 anti-Covid jabs. 

Amid a shortage, several states have decided to float global tenders for the procurement of anti-COVID vaccines. Chief Ministers of some states have also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi arguing for wider approval for vaccine production.