'Put restrictions on festivals mass gatherings'; Centre plans to stop 3rd wave

Representational Image (Credit: PTI)

New Delhi: Ahead of the festival season, the Centre has advised states to take steps to ensure appropriate restrictions to curb mass gatherings.

In a letter, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told the states to consider the imposition of local restrictions and to curb mass gatherings.

The government’s communication comes amid the third COVID wave scare. The second wave of the pandemic took a heavy toll on people across the country.

Notably, various state governments had earlier cancelled Kanwar Yatra and other religious events.

India on Wednesday reported 42,625 new coronavirus infections that pushed its tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,17,69,132 while as many as 562 deaths have been recorded in the last 24 hours, as per Health Ministry data.

India crossed the grim milestone of two crore coronavirus cases on May 4 and three crore cases on June 23.

The national COVID-19 recovery rate rose to 97.37 per cent with 3,09,33,022 total recoveries across the country, the data updated at 8 am showed.

India's active caseload is currently at 4,10,353 which constitute 1.29% of total cases, an increase of 5,395 cases has been recorded in the active caseload in a span of 24 hours.