India on Saturday recorded 4,187 coronavirus-related deaths, the highest ever since the pandemic broke out last year, as a fierce second wave continued to overwhelm the country’s hospitals. With this, the toll rose to 2,38,270, data from the health ministry showed.

The country recorded 4,01,078 new cases in 24 hours, taking the tally of infections in the country to 2,18,92,676. This is the fourth time after May 1, when the count rose by more than 4 lakh.

The number of active cases stood at 37,23,446. As many as 1.79 crore people have recovered from the disease so far.

The Tamil Nadu government imposed a complete lockdown in the state for two weeks starting from May 10, amid the worsening coronavirus situation. The restrictions will be in effect from 4 am on May 10 to 4 am on May 24.

The Centre has instructed the states to first vaccinate those who are yet to receive their second dose of the Covid vaccine before beginning to inoculate the 18–44 age group. The new directives came amid crippling shortages of vaccines that has slowed down the inoculation drive in the country.

As of Saturday, 16.73 crore people have been inoculated against Covid-19. Of these, 22.97 lakh were vaccinated on Friday.

Several states have had to delay the third phase of vaccination as enough supplies are not available to handle the burden of inoculating nearly 60 crore citizens in the 18-44 age group who became eligible to receive the shot from May 1.

Meanwhile, The World Health Organization on Friday approved Chinese vaccine Sinopharm for emergency use in coronavirus patients. This is the first vaccine developed by a non-Western country to get the global health body’s backing.

Globally, the coronavirus has infected 15.64 crore people across the world and killed over 32.65 lakh since the pandemic broke out in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University. Over 9.26 crore people have recovered from the infection.