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India on Saturday conducted 868,679 tests - the highest number of Covid-19 tests in the last 24 hours, taking the overall tests to over 28.5 million, according to the Union health ministry. Officials said India is focusing on a test, track, treat strategy to prevent the spread of the infection.
Maharashtra is the COVID capital of the country: Former Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis
Senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis Saturday termed Maharashtra as the "COVID capital" of the country, PTI reported. He stressed that testing needs to be ramped up to check the spread of coronavirus and to bring the fatality rate under control.
"Maharashtra has become the COVID capital of the country as the state accounts for 24 percent of the total number of cases in India. The state also accounts for 41 percent of the total deaths in the country," Fadnavis said.
"Conducting antigen tests is a good thing but the number of RT-PCR tests should be increased," the former CM said, adding that the current ratio of RT-PCR and antigen tests is 1:2, which should be equal.
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Maharashtra reported around 12,614 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, taking the state’s total tally to 5,84,754. With 322 deaths during the past 24 hours, the state death toll climbed to 19,749, the health department said. As many as 6,844 patients were discharged from hospitals on Saturday, taking the total number of recoveries to 4,08,286, the department said. There are 1,56,409 active cases at present.
Mumbai reported 1,254 new cases and 48 deaths on Saturday. Pune district, meanwhile, recorded 2,432 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, bringing its total tally to 1,22,397.
Global Status
The global number of novel coronavirus cases crossed the 21 million-mark and stood at 21,380,892 on Sunday, with the death toll rising to 769,757, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The United States reported the highest number of cases, with more than 5 million infections (5,359,748). The US is followed by Brazil (3,317,096 cases) and India (2,526,192)
Russia produced the first batch of its new vaccine for Covid-19, hours after the health ministry reported the start of manufacturing. Russia said that the vaccine will be rolled out by the end of this month.
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