Daily Covid death toll falls below 300, a first since June

NEW DELHI: India’s daily death toll from Covid-19 fell below 300 for the first time since June 9, as 253 fatalities were recorded in the country on Christmas day, the lowest toll in more than six months.

Most of the states reported a fall in fatalities as compared with the previous day, even as fresh cases dropped to under 23,000 — the lowest single day tally so far for any day other than a Monday since July 2.

However, despite the steady decline in Covid numbers for more than three months now, India has still recorded the fourth highest count of cases in the world so far in December after the US, Brazil and Russia.

Till December 24, the month’s tally of new cases in India was 6,84,896. This puts December in line to register the lowest monthly case count since June. However, India’s December numbers are still high enough have been surpassed so far by only three countries — the US, which has reported a staggering 51 lakh cases in December alone, Brazil (nearly 11 lakh) and Russia (6,97,052), as per data from worldometers.info. Turkey is a close fifth so far with 6,69,064 cases detected till December 24.

December is likely to log the highest number of Covid cases worldwide since the outbreak of the pandemic. On Friday, India recorded 22,469 fresh cases, around a thousand less than the previous day. With the extended Christmas weekend coming up, numbers are likely to remain low over the next three days. With this, India's total caseload rose to 1,01,70,390.

The death toll fell sharply from 337 recorded on the previous day to 253. This was the lowest count of daily deaths recorded in 206 days since 219 fatalities reported on June 2. Several big states reported a sharp drop in fatalities from Thursday’s toll. Maharashtra’s toll fell from 89 to 71, Delhi’s from 37 to 30 and Uttar Pradesh’s from 23 to 13. Similarly, Punjab reported nine deaths from Covid, down from 17 on Thursday while fatalities fell from 22 to 14 in Chhattisgarh. India's death toll from the pandemic now stands at 1,47,331.

Meanwhile, there was a drop in the number of recoveries as well, leading to a rise in active cases since November 27.