COVID-19 Updates: India Logs 269 New Cases; Maharashtra Records 63 New Cases, One More Death

New Delhi: India saw a single-day rise of 269 new cases of COVID-19, while the number of active cases of the infection has declined to 2,556, the health ministry said on Wednesday (January 17). Three deaths – two from Kerala and one from Maharashtra have been reported in the last 24 hours, according to the ministry’s data updated at 8 am. The number of daily cases had dropped to double-digits till December 5, but cases began to increase after the emergence of a new variant and cold weather conditions.

After December 5, a maximum of a single-day rise of 841 new cases was reported on December 31, 2023, which is 0.2 per cent of the peak cases reported in May 2021, official sources said.

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Of the total active cases, around 92 per cent are recovering under home isolation. The official source stated,

The currently available data suggests that the JN.1 sub-variant is neither leading to an exponential rise in the new cases nor a surge in hospitalisation and mortality.

India has witnessed three waves of COVID-19 in the past with the peak incidence of daily new cases and deaths being reported during the delta wave during April-June 2021.

At its peak, 414,188 new cases and 3,915 deaths were reported on May 7, 2021.

Since the pandemic began in early 2020, there have been more than 4.5 crore people getting infected and over 5.3 lakh deaths in about four years since then across the country.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease stands at over 4.4 crore with a national recovery rate of 98.81 per cent, according to the ministry’s website.

According to the website, 220.67 crore doses of Covid vaccines have so far been administered in the country.

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Meanwhile, Maharashtra on Wednesday (January 17) registered 81 fresh COVID-19 cases and one fatality, while the tally of patients infected with the JN.1 sub-variant has risen to 451 so far, the state health department said.

In Mumbai, as many as 15 fresh cases of new coronavirus sub-variant JN.1 have been detected in Mumbai this week so far, city civic officials said on Wednesday. Daksha Shah, executive health officer, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), said 19 swab samples tested positive for the JN.1 sub-variant during whole genome sequencing (WGS) and four of them were out of the metropolis.

The sole fatality was reported from Pune city. The COVID-19 fatality rate in Maharashtra currently stands at 1.81 per cent, it said. Mumbai registered 26 fresh cases.

At 189, Pune leads the tally of patients found to be infected by the JN.1 sub-variant of Omicron in the state. Pune is followed by Thane (89), Mumbai (37), Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (31), Nagpur (30), Raigad (13), Solapur and Amravati (9), Sangli and Kolhapur (7), Ratnagiri (5), Jalgaon and Hingoli (4), Ahmadnagar and Beed (3), Nanded, Nashik and Dharashiv (2), and one each in Akola, Satara, Sindhudurg Yavatmal and Nandurbar, as per the health department.

A total of 97 people were discharged in Maharashtra on Wednesday (January 17) at a recovery rate of 98.18 per cent. A total of 12,269 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours of which 1,783 were RT-PCR and 10,486 were Rapid Antigen Tests. The current positivity rate stands at 0.66 per cent, the department said.

Maharashtra on Tuesday (January 16) recorded 63 fresh cases of coronavirus and one more fatality linked to the respiratory illness, the health department said. Mumbai recorded 23 of these cases, while the lone coronavirus-related death was reported from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district in central Maharashtra, the department said in a bulletin. The case fatality rate in the state stood at 1.81 per cent.

The state has 250 patients infected with the new JN.1 sub-variant of Omicron, said the bulletin.

The World Health Organisation has classified JN.1 as a separate ‘variant of interest’ (VoI) given its rapidly-increasing spread, but said it poses a ‘low’ global public health risk.

The bulletin said 113 patients recovered from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours and the recovery rate in the state stood at 98.18 per cent.

The health department said 10,054 tests were conducted state-wide in the last 24 hours for detection of COVID-19.

Also Read: COVID-19 Updates: India Logs 180 New Cases, Three Deaths In The Last 24 Hours

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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