COVID: India surpasses Russia as third worst-hit country

New Delhi: India has overtaken Russia as the third worst-hit country by coronavirus after the total number of cases neared seven lakh.

The Union Health Ministry has reported 24,248 cases and 425 deaths in the last 24 hours. The fresh cases and deaths have pushed the total cases in the country to 6,97,413 and the death count to 19,693.

The recovery rate stands at 60.85 per cent, with  4,24,433 patients across the country having recovering from the highly contagious disease.

India has now taken the third spot in the list of nations worst hit by coronavirus.

The country logged more than 6.9 lakh cases on Sunday evening, according to data from state governments, overtaking Russia, which had 6.8 lakh as per America’s Johns Hopkins University (JHU). India is now preceded only by Brazil and the US. Brazil has over 15 lakh cases and the US has more than 28 lakh.

Approval for human clinical trials for two made-in-India COVID-19 vaccine candidates – COVAXIN and ZyCov-D – marks the “beginning of the end” for the novel coronavirus pandemic that has infected over 1.12 crore people worldwide and left more than 5.3 lakh dead, the government said on Sunday.

The Delhi government on Sunday instructed all health care facilities to carry out compulsory rapid antigen detection testing of patients with ILI symptoms, patients admitted with SARI and other high-risk individuals who visit their facilities.