In what looks like the building-up of a second wave of coronavirus infections in India, five states – Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu – continue to report a surge in the daily new cases of Covid-19, together accounting for 78.41% of the new cases, an official note said on Monday.

In the 24 hours from Sunday to Monday morning, 26,291 new cases were registered in the country. Maharashtra reported the highest daily new cases at 16,620 (accounting for 63.21% of the total). It is followed by Kerala with 1,792 while Punjab reported 1,492 new cases.

A rising trajectory of daily new cases is visible in eight states: Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka and Haryana. Kerala has a consistently declining trend over last one month.

India’s total active caseload has reached 2,19,262 today, comprising 1.93% of the total Positive Cases. Three states, Maharashtra, Kerala and Punjab, cumulatively account for 77% of India’s total active cases. Maharashtra alone accounts for more than 58% of the total active cases in the country.
Meanwhile, India is fast approaching total vaccination coverage of 3 crore. As many as 2,99,08,038 vaccine doses had been administered through 5,13,065 sessions, as per the provisional report till 7 am Monday.

These include 73,55,755 healthcare workers (HCWs) (1st dose), 43,05,118 HCWs (2nd dose), 73,40,423 frontline workers (FLWs) (1st dose) and 11,50,535 FLWs (2nd Dose), 14,64,014 beneficiaries aged more than 45 years with specific co-morbidities (1st Dose) and 82,92,193 beneficiaries aged more than 60 years.

As on Day-58 of the vaccination drive (March 14), 1,40,880 vaccine doses were given. Being aholiday, most states and UTs did not schedule vaccination sessions Sunday.

Of the total, 1,20,885 beneficiaries were vaccinated across 2,211 sessions for 1st dose (HCWs and FLWs) and 19,995 HCWs and FLWs received 2nd dose of vaccine.

India’s cumulative recoveries stand at 1,10,07,352 on Monday. The national Recovery Rate is 96.68%. As many as 17,455 recoveries were registered in the last 24 hours. Some 84.10% of the new recovered cases are observed to be concentrated in six states. Maharashtra has reported the maximum number of single day recoveries with 8,861 newly recovered cases.

Meanwhile, 118 deaths were reported in the 24 hours. Six states account for 82.20% of the new deaths. Maharashtra saw the maximum casualties (50). Punjab follows with 20 daily deaths and Kerala reported15 deaths in the last 24 hours.

Sixteen states/UTs have not reported any Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours. These are Assam, Chandigarh, J&K (UT), Odisha, Jharkhand, Lakshadweep, Sikkim, Ladakh (UT), Manipur, D&N & D&N, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, A&N Islands and Arunachal Pradesh.