India: Coronavirus cases cross 2.5M mark

By Shuriah Niazi

NEW DELHI (AA) – India registered 57,381 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, crossing the grim mark of 2.5 million on Saturday.

The tally now stands at 2,526,192, according to data by the Ministry of Health and Family Affairs.

With nearly 1,000 new fatalities, the death toll surged to 49,036. India still remains the third worst-hit country in terms of case count after the US and Brazil.

It run 868,679 tests on Friday and has carried out more than 2.8 million tests so far, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

The western state of Maharshtra is the most-affected with an excess of 500,000 cases followed by Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

Infections are also raising rapidly in other states.

On Friday, Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the Ministry of Health and Family Affairs, tested positive for COVID-19.

In the last six months, he addressed news conferences on COVID-19 as a representative of the union government.

In a tweet, he said he is under home isolation as per COVID-19 guidelines after testing positive.