India's COVID-19 death toll crosses 300,000

NEW DELHI, May 24 (Xinhua) -- India's COVID-19 death toll crossed the 300,000-mark, reaching 303,720 on Monday, confirmed the federal health ministry.

The first 100,000 COVID-19 deaths took place in the country in nearly nine months, while it rose to 200,000 in almost seven months, but the last 100,000 deaths were added in just 26 days as the daily deaths peaked at over 4,000 amid the ongoing deadly second wave.

India became the third country in the world to have crossed the 300,000 deaths, after the United States and Brazil.

As many as 4,454 deaths were recorded in the past 24 hours, which was said to be the highest so far in the country.

Meanwhile, the country's overall COVID-19 cases rose to 26,752,447, with as many as 222,315 new cases registered since Sunday morning.

There are still 2,720,716 active cases in the country, a decrease of 84,683 cases in the past 24 hours. The number of daily active cases has been on the decline over the past few days, after a continuous surge since mid-April.

A total of 23,728,011 people has been cured and discharged from hospitals so far across the country.

In a bid to curb the COVID-19 cases graph, most of the states in the country have imposed night curfews and partial or complete lockdowns.

Principal Scientific Advisor to India's federal government K. Vijay Raghavan recently stated that a third COVID-19 wave was "inevitable" in the country.

So far over 196 million vaccination doses (196,051,962) have been administered to the people across the country. A total of 942,722 vaccine doses were given on Sunday alone.

Presently the third phase of COVID-19 vaccination is going on, covering all people aged 18 years and above. However, an acute shortage of vaccines is being felt across the country.

Meanwhile, the federal government has ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities across the country.

As many as 330,536,064 tests were conducted till Sunday, out of which 1,928,127 tests were conducted on Sunday alone, said the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Monday.

Three types of vaccines are being administered to the people in India, including the Covishield vaccine, the Covaxin vaccine, and the Russia-made vaccine Sputnik-V.