India 3rd country to cross 2M Covid-19 cases mark

Authorities report over 62,000 new coronavirus cases, marking biggest daily jump in country

NEW DELHI:

India’s coronavirus tally crossed the 2 million mark on Thursday evening, also giving it the dubious distinction of trailing only the US and Brazil in total case numbers.

It just took 20 days for the country to go from 1 million cases to 2 million, according to Health Ministry figures.

The country registered 62,170 cases over the last 24 hours, bringing the total caseload to 2.03 million, according to official government data. India’s death tally also soared to 41,638.

The recovery rate of Covid-19 patients in India continued its upward journey to reach another record high of 67.62%, said the ministry.

Total recoveries of coronavirus patients jumped to 1.33 million with 46,121 Covid-19 patients being discharged in a day on Thursday.

The total number of Covid-19 samples tested up to Thursday is 22.7 million including 574,783 samples tested yesterday, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Meanwhile, an interim analysis of a randomised controlled trial done at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences to assess the efficacy of convalescent plasma therapy found it does not reduce mortality risk among Covid-19 patients.

“No clear mortality benefit of convalescent plasma therapy was seen during a trial conducted among 30 Covid-19 patients,” said Dr Randeep Guleria, the institute’s director.

Convalescent plasma therapy involves taking antibodies from a recovered Covid-19 patient and transfusing those into an active novel coronavirus-infected patient to help them fight the infection.