India's daily COVID-19 caseload decreases to 6,809

NEW DELHI, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- India's daily COVID-19 caseload Sunday decreased to 6,809, taking the total tally to 44,456,535 in the country, according to federal health ministry data released on Sunday morning.

With the reporting of fresh cases, India's active caseload currently stands at 55,114.

The country also logged 26 related deaths during the past 24 hours, pushing the overall death toll to 527,991 since the beginning of the pandemic, the ministry said.

With the increase in cases, the daily positivity rate stands at 2.12 percent and the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 2.29 percent, the ministry data showed.

The ministry said so far 43,873,430 people have been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals, of whom 8,414 were discharged during the past 24 hours.

According to the health ministry, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the country has exceeded two billion doses and until Sunday morning, 2,132,043,050 doses were administered.

So far, over 887 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country.

A cumulative total of 887,151,961 samples have been tested up to Sept. 3, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said Sunday. Out of these 320,820 tests were conducted on Saturday alone.

A local media report said so far around 12 percent of the eligible population in the age group of 18-59 years have taken the booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

On Wednesday, Dr N K Arora, who is part of the government's COVID-19 task force, said COVID-19 was still around and quite a significant transmission of viruses was going on.

At present, the Indian government is focusing on improving booster dose coverage as the uptake for the third dose has been low. The aim is to boost the immunity of people in the wake of the detection of new variants.

Recently, India's health ministry wrote to the seven states including the capital Delhi, asking them to ensure adequate testing, promote COVID-19-appropriate behavior, and increase the pace of vaccination to contain the ongoing increase in cases.