Covid-19 death toll crosses 1.4L, active cases fall to 137-day low

The Covid-19 death toll in India crossed 1.4 lakh on Saturday even as active cases in the country dropped to nearly 4 lakh, its lowest count in 137 days, with the creeping fall in fresh cases continuing. Overall fatalities from the virus stood at 1,40,167 after 482 deaths were added to the tally on Saturday. India has recorded the third highest number of Covid-19 deaths in the world after the US (285,550 fatalities) and Brazil (175,981).

This was the first time in five days that the daily toll had fallen below 500. India’s case fatality rate, the percentage of patients dying from the disease, stands at nearly 1.5% and has been dropping gradually.

There were less than 4,04,000 active cases in the country, the lowest since July 21, with the number falling by nearly 6,000 during the day. The count of active cases is set to drop below the 4-lakh mark on Sunday, if the present falling trend in cases continues.

The last time India’s tally of active cases was below 4 lakh was on July 19. The country recorded 36,053 fresh cases on Saturday, taking the total caseload to 96,44,151, as per TOI’s data collated from state government figures.

Daily cases have remained in the 36,000-37,000 range for the past five days, a drop from last week’s daily average of 41,700.

The last time daily cases hit the 40,000 mark was a week ago. As with the total number of new cases, fresh infections reported from most states changed very little from Friday’s numbers. As in the previous four days, Kerala accounted for the highest count of new cases at 5,848. The state had recorded 5,718 new infections on the previous day. Maharashtra reported the next highest number of cases (4,922), followed by Delhi (3,419), Bengal (3,175) and Rajasthan (2,076).