Covid: India's daily cases surpass 13,000 mark for first time in 3 months

Covid-19 cases in India crossed the 13,000-mark for the first time after more than three months, with the country reporting 13,216 fresh infections in the last 24 hours, according to Union Health Ministry data.

After a gap of three months, the country witnessed an uptick in the number of Covid-19 cases as the country has been crossing the 12,000- mark for the past two days. India logged 12,213 cases on Thursday, followed by 12,847 cases on Friday.

On February 26 this year, India recorded 11,499 Covid-19 cases.

With this, India's active Covid-19 caseload rose to 68,108, which accounts for 0.16 per cent of the total cases.

The government data today informed that as many as 8,148 recoveries were registered in the last 24 hours thereby increasing the total recoveries to 42,690,845. The recovery rate currently stands at 98.63 per cent.

At present, the daily positivity rate stands at 2.73 per cent while the weekly positivity rate is 2.47 per cent. The death toll increased to 524,840 with 23 fresh fatalities.

Under the nationwide vaccination program, India's Covid-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 1.96 billion (1,960,042,768) as per provisional reports till 7am today. This has been achieved through 25,266,330 sessions.

So far, more than 35.6 million (35,640,133) adolescents have been administered the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

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More than 1.93 billion (1,935,358,865) vaccine doses have been provided to States/UTs so far, out of which, over 128.9 million (128,973,380) balance and unutilized vaccine doses are still available with them.

Amid the recent surge reported in Covid-19 cases across the country, the Health Ministry of India on June 9 urged States and Union Territories to not lower their guards and strictly maintain the Covid-appropriate behaviour. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Thursday wrote a letter to States/UTs and directed them to ramp up RT-PCR testing, surveillance, clinical management, vaccination, Covid protocols and take timely pre-emptive actions. Bhushan also advised the government to follow a 'five-fold Strategy'.

• India