INDIA's total coronavirus cases reached 968,876 on Thursday (16) with a record 32,695 new cases reported in the last 24 hours. The death toll went up to 24,915, including 606 fatalities in a day. As many as 20,783 patients were cured on Wednesday (15), taking the recovery rate to 63.25 per cent.
The country reported its first Covid-19 case on January 30.
Out of the total cases, 612,814 have been cured, while 331,146 are currently active, said the health ministry.
Maharashtra, the worst-affected state in the country, has a total of 275,640 Covid-19 cases and 10,928 fatalities. Tamil Nadu has a tally of 151,820 cases and 2,167 deaths due to the pandemic while Delhi has reported a total of 116,993 cases and 3,487 deaths.
Of the 606 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, 233 are from Maharashtra, 86 from Karnataka, 68 from Tamil Nadu, 44 from Andhra Pradesh, 41 from Delhi, 29 from Uttar Pradesh, 20 from West Bengal, 11 each from Jammu and Kashmir and Telangana, 10 from Gujarat and nine from Madhya Pradesh.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) a total of 12.7 million samples have been tested in India for coronavirus till July 15.
Meanwhile, Indian pharmaceutical company Zydus Cadila has initiated the phase 1, 2 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of coronavirus vaccine candidate by intradermal (injection) route in 1,048 subjects after the pharma company got approval from Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) earlier this month.
Ashwini Guruji 
