India on Sunday logged 36,083 new coronavirus cases, taking the infection tally in the country to 3,21,92,576 since the pandemic broke out in January last year. The new cases were 6.6% lower than Saturday’s count of 38,667.

The toll rose to 4,31,225 after 493 patients died due to the infection in the last 24 hours. The number of active cases in India – 3,85,336 – comprise 1.2% of the total cases. The tally of recoveries in India stood at 3,13,76,015. The recovery rate was 97.46%.

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

As many as 54,38,36,290 vaccine doses have been administered in India since the beginning of the inoculation drive on January 16, according to data on the Union health ministry.

India has approved five vaccines for emergency use so far – Serum Institute’s Covishield, Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, Russia’s Sputnik V, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot. For now, only Covishield and Covaxin are being used in India’s vaccination programme.

On Saturday, President Ram Nath Kovind said he was deeply pained that many lives could not be saved during the terrible second wave of the coronavirus disease in India.

The Delta variant was responsible for the devastating second wave, which, at its peak, saw more than 4 lakh cases, and thousands of deaths every day. In April and May, several states experienced crippling shortages of oxygen, hospital beds, medical supplies and vaccines, causing citizens to take to social media to ask for help.

Meanwhile, the Punjab government made it mandatory for those travelling to the state to either be fully-vaccinated against Covid-19 or carry a negative RT-PCR test report.

Globally, Covid-19 has infected over 20.67 crore people and led to more than 43.54 lakh deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.