India reports record 4,529 Covid deaths

Neighbouring India recorded its highest daily Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday despite the cases decreasing for the last few days.

Daily death toll reached 4,529 on Wednesday, according to the Union Health Ministry of India.

India has been witnessing over 4,000 deaths daily for the past one week except on May 15.

This is the seventh time since May 12 when India has registered over 4,000 daily deaths due to Covid-19.

The country has been logging less than three lakh infections since Monday when the daily cases dropped below the mark for the first time since April 21.

The positivity rate of the virus is higher than 15 percent in 22 states, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said in a tweet last evening.

India's average positivity rate stood at 13.31 percent this morning. In the last 24 hours, 20,08,296 samples were tested in a new record.

The government on Tuesday said only 1.8 percent of the country's population has contracted the virus so far.

“Despite the high number of cases reported so far, we have been able to contain the spread to under 2 percent of the population. We can't let our guards down, hence continued focus on containment is critical," Indian NDTV reports quoting a top official within the government.

Many states - scrambling to get enough doses - are still not able to step up the vaccination drive.

The centre, however, said over 1.94 crore doses are still available with the states.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday assured, “Vaccination is an effective means of fight Covid and we should together remove all misgivings about it. We are making relentless efforts to increase the supply.”

Serum Institute of India's Adar Poonawalla on Tuesday evening said his firm “never exported vaccines at the cost of the people of India.”

Stressing that all efforts are being made to ramp up production, he said India's vaccination drive can't be completed in two-three months, given the huge population.

India has witnessed deaths of 270 doctors ever since it was hit by the second wave, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has said.