India on Wednesday recorded 4,529 Covid-19 deaths, the highest single-day spike of fatalities anywhere in the world since the beginning of the pandemic, official data showed.
The South Asian country set the grim global record by breaching the previous highest figure of 4,475 in the United States on January 12, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
India saw 267,334 new infections in the past 24 hours, taking its overall caseload to 25.5 million, the health ministry said in its latest bulletin. Altogether, 283,248 people have died of the disease. India, battling a second deadly wave of the pandemic, had also registered the world's highest daily tally of 414,188 cases on May 7.
Although cases have declined since then, the government has warned that only 1.8 percent of the country's over 1.3 billion population has contracted the virus so far. "Despite the high number of cases reported so far, we have been able to contain the spread to under 2 percent of the population. We cannot let our guard down, hence continued focus on containment is critical," senior health ministry official Lav Agarwal told reporters.
After the exponential surge in cases overwhelmed hospitals in cities and towns, case numbers are rising rapidly in rural regions where health facilities are ill-equipped and Covid-19 tests are unavailable. India's inoculation drive has been floundering and despite being a global hub for vaccine manufacturing, only 3 percent of the population are fully vaccinated.
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