COVID-19 cases in India top 20,000; toll reaches 652

The countrywide COVID-19 death toll rose to 652 and the number of cases to 20,471 on Wednesday, an increase of 49 fatalities and 1,486 cases since Tuesday evening, according to the Union health ministry.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 15,859, while 3,959 people have been cured and discharged, the ministry said, adding that one patient has migrated.

Thus, over 19 per cent of the cases have recovered so far, a health ministry official said.

The total number of cases includes 77 foreign nationals who were tested positive in India.

Of the 49 deaths reported since Tuesday evening, 19 were from Maharashtra, 18 Gujarat, four from Madhya Pradesh, three from West Bengal, two from Andhra Pradesh and one each from Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, the ministry said.

Of the total 652 deaths, Maharashtra tops the tally with 251, followed by Gujarat at 95, Madhya Pradesh at 80, Delhi at 47, Rajasthan at 25, Andhra Pradesh at 24 and Telangana at 23, according to the ministry.

The death toll reached 21 in Uttar Pradesh, 18 in Tamil Nadu while Karantaka has reported 17 cases.

Punjab has registered 16 deaths, while West Bengal has reported 15 fatalities due to coronavirus infection so far.

The disease has claimed five lives in Jammu and Kashmir, while Kerala, Jharkhand and Haryana have recorded three COVID-19 deaths each.

Bihar has reported two deaths, while Meghalaya, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and Assam have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry data.

However, a tally of the figures reported by various states as on Wednesday showed 20,564 cases and 654 deaths in the country.

There has been a lag in the Union health ministry figures, compared to the number of deaths announced by different states, which officials attribute to procedural delays in assigning the cases to individual states.

According to the health ministry's data updated in the evening, the highest number of confirmed cases in the country are from Maharashtra at 5,221, followed by Gujarat at 2,272, Delhi at 2,156, Rajasthan at 1,801, Tamil Nadu at 1,596 and Madhya Pradesh at 1,592.

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 1,412 in Uttar Pradesh, 945 in Telangana and 813 in Andhra Pradesh.

The number of cases has risen to 427 in Kerala, 425 in Karnataka, 423 in West Bengal, 380 in Jammu and Kashmir, 254 in Haryana and 251 in Punjab.

Bihar has reported 126 coronavirus cases, while Odisha has 82.

Forty-six people have been infected with the virus in Uttarakhand while Jharkhand has 45 cases.

Himachal Pradesh has 39 cases, Chhattisgarh has 36, while Assam has registered 35 infections so far.

Chandigarh has 27 COVID-19 cases, Ladakh 18, while 17 cases have been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Meghalaya has reported 12 cases, while Goa and Puducherry have seven COVID-19 patients each.

Manipur and Tripura have two cases each, while Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh have reported a case each.

"Our figures are being reconciled with the ICMR," the ministry said on its website.

It further said that one case of Jharkhand has been reassigned to Bihar after reconciliation.

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