INDIA reported on Monday (31) its lowest daily rise in new coronavirus infections since April 11 at 152,734 cases over the past 24 hours, while deaths rose by 3,128.
The South Asian nation's tally of infections now stands at 28 million, while the death toll has reached 329,100, health ministry data showed.
The active caseload further declined to 2,026,092, the ministry added.
Meanwhile, the Serum institute of India (SII) will raise production of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to about 90 million doses in June from about 65 million a month now, a company spokesman said on Monday.
In a letter to home minister Amit Shah, the company said its employees have been working round the clock in spite of various challenges because of the pandemic.
“We are pleased to inform that in the month of June we will be able to manufacture and supply 90 to 100m doses of our Covishield vaccine to the country as compared to our production capacity of 65m doses in May,” Prakash Kumar Singh, the director of government and regulatory affairs at SII, said in the letter.
In early May, SII had communicated to the Centre that production of Covishield would be ramped up to 65m in June, 70m in July and 100m each in August and September.
India's Covid recoveries continued to outnumber the daily new cases for the 18th consecutive day. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 25,692,342, with 238,022 patients having recovered in the past 24 hours. The case fatality rate stands at 1.17 per cent.
The country conducted 1,683,135 tests on Sunday (30), taking the total cumulative tests conducted so far in the country to 344,866,883, while the daily positivity was recorded at 9.07 per cent.
It has been less than 10 per cent for the past one week, the ministry said. Weekly positivity rate has declined to 9.04 per cent.
The ministry said that the national Covid-19 recovery rate has improved to 91.60 per cent.
The cumulative number of Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the country has exceeded 213m. A total of 213,154,129 doses have been administered through 3,028,295 sessions, according to the provisional report.
The most number of fatalities from Covid-19 are from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab states.
Ashwini Guruji 
