A healthcare worker collects a test swab sample from a woman amidst the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at a testing centre inside a hospital in New Delhi. (Representative image: Reuters)
The declining trend of Covid-19 cases in India continued with 2,09,918 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours — marking a reduction of over 10 percent in the daily cases in comparison to the day before.
This confirms the understanding that the third wave of the pandemic in India, largely triggered by the highly contagious Omicron variant, may be ebbing.
The active caseload in the country which was 18,84,937 on January 30 also came down by 53, 669, or nearly 3 percent, and stood at 18,31,268 on January 31.
Moreover, the rolling average of weekly Covid-19 test positivity rate in India is now under 16%, as per the statistics shared by the Union health ministry which also showed that the daily test positivity rate has come down to 15.77 percent.
A total of 959 deaths, however, were recorded in the last 24 hours, 374 of which were added as part of data reconciliation exercise in Kerala. Registering 101 fresh deaths during the 24-hour period, the southern state also recorded the highest number of deaths due to the infectious disease in India on January 31.
With this, the number of fatalities confirmed due to the infectious disease in India has reached to 4,950,50.
On a positive note, there are now only 4 states and Union Territories that include Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Manipur that noted a rise in active cases, while the rest of states registered a significant decline in cases.
Maharashtra, which has been seeing the worst of the pandemic, almost since its beginning in 2020, recorded the sharpest drop of 16,621 cases in the total active cases in a day.