India on Sunday recorded 41,831 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours taking the country’s tally of cases to 3,16,55,824 since the pandemic broke out in January last year. This is a 0.87% higher than Saturday’s count of 41,469 cases.

With 541 deaths, the toll rose to 4,24,351. The number of active cases went up by 2,032 to 4,10,952. A total of 3,08,20,521 patients have recovered from the disease.

(Source: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare)

Following a review meeting on the pandemic situation, the Centre, on Saturday, flagged 10 states that are either reporting an increase in daily cases or a rise in the positivity rate. These states are Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur, the government said.

Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that the states need to consider imposing stricter restrictions, such as preventing or limiting the movement of residents as well as mass gathering in 46 districts reporting a positivity rate of over 10% in the last few weeks.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences chief Randeep Guleria said that it was a matter of concern that the R-value of infections in India inching up to 1. R-number measures how many people are being infected by one Covid-positive person on an average. For instance, a value between 0.7 and 0.9 means that every 10 Covid-positive people will pass on the infection to seven to nine others.

The number of infections keeps rising if the R value is more than 1.

Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government may relax Covid-19 restrictions in 25 districts of the state that have been reporting lower daily caseload and positivity rate, according to the Hindustan Times. State Health Minister Rajesh Tope said that the government was also planning to allow fully vaccinated people to travel on local trains in Mumbai.

Punjab is set to join the list to allow schools to reopen, NDTV reported. The state government, on Saturday, announced that the schools will reopen from August 2.

Global updates

The Delta variant of the coronavirus led to record number of infections on Saturday in Thailand (18,912), Malaysia (17,786) and the Olympics host city Tokyo (4,058) in a single day, Reuters reported. Florida in the United States also logged the highest single-day count since the pandemic broke out as 21,683 new cases were registered, according to PTI.

The spread of infections due to the Delta variant has forced China to put more than 10 lakh people under lockdown. As many as 14 provinces in the country are going through a fresh outbreak of the infection, according to AFP.

In Australia too, authorities in the Queensland state imposed a lockdown on Saturday. The country’s New South Wales state is already under restrictions.

Meanwhile, amid a fourth wave of the pandemic in France, thousands of people protested in Paris and other French cities on Saturday against a mandatory coronavirus health pass for entry to a number of public venues, Reuters reported.

Globally, Covid-19 has infected 19.77 crore people and caused 42.16 lakh deaths since the pandemic broke out in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.