New Delhi: India records 4,159 COVID-19 related deaths in a single day, raising the total number of fatalities to 3,11,421. The Union Health Ministry confirmed 2,08,714 new infections across the country in the past 24 hours, meaning that the 2.70Cr people have contracted the disease so far. MoHFW reported 24,90,876 active cases and 2,95,085 recuperations.
The Southern Belt of the country is witnessing a worrying surge in cases, while Maharashtra, the worst-hit state, reports a drop in its infected count. Maharashtra logged 24,136 fresh cases in the last 24 hours, Kerala logged 29,803 cases and 34,285 cases were recorded in Tamil Nadu. The National Capital which was under lockdown for several weeks now reported only 1,568 infections.
As the SOS for the shortage of vaccines is being sounded too often, the centre urged the states to slab their vaccine wastage to 1%. Many states such as Jharkhand (37.3%), Chhattisgarh (30.2%), Tamil Nadu (15.5%), Jammu and Kashmir (10.8%), Madhya Pradesh (10.7%) have reported much higher wastage than the national average (6.3%).
Globally, there have been 167,011,807 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 3,472,068 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 24 May 2021, a total of 1,489,727,128 vaccine doses have been administered.