Touching 9K cases a day, COVID tally crosses 2L in India

India witnessed closed to 9,000 new cases on Wednesday as the total case count of coronavirus mounted to 2,07,615, the Health Ministry data revealed.

With 8,909 new cases and 217 fatalities reported in the last 24 hours, India is now poised at the seventh place on the world tally table with just 25,000 cases behind Italy.

Of the total cases 1,01,497 are active and 1,00,303 have been cured and discharged while 5,815 have died from the disease.

The recovery rate in the country stood at 48.31 per cent while the fatality rate docked at 2.8 per cent.

Maharashtra reported a total of 72,300 cases so far -- almost 50,000 more than Tamil Nadu with 24,586 and Delhi 22,132.

Maharashtra has also reported the highest number of casualties -- 2,465, followed by Gujarat (1,092), Delhi (556) and Madhya Pradesh (364).

States that have reported more than 5,000 cases are Madhya Pradesh (8,420), Rajasthan (9,373), Uttar Pradesh (8,361) and West Bengal (6,168).

The Health Ministry on Tuesday said that India is far from COVID peak. ICMR official Nivedita Gupta, addressing a press conference, said: "We are very far away from the peak. Our preventive measures to curb the disease are very effective and we are better positioned in comparison with other countries. You will get to see the data in a week."

India so far has conducted a total of 41,03,233 tests and 1,37,158 samples were tested in the last 24 hours according to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

The global count reached 6.4 million and fatalities crossed 3 lakh after the first case was reported in China's Wuhan in mid December 2019. The US continues to top the chart reporting the highest cases, followed by Brazil and Russia that have overtaken Italy, the UK and Spain in just over a month.