India’s COVID count has surpassed 78 lakh with a spike of 53,370 cases in the last 24 hours, government data showed on October 24.

At least 650 deaths in the last 24 hours have pushed the total death count to 1,17,956. Meanwhile, 70,16,046 people in the country have recovered from the deadly virus since the beginning of the pandemic, pushing the recovery rate to 89.78 per cent on Saturday.India has been reporting a steady decline in its daily coronavirus infections after reaching a peak of about 90,000 cases a day in September.The number of active cases stands at 6,80,680. Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal and Delhi are the five states that reported the highest number of cases in the last 24 hours.Delhi on Friday reported over 4,000 coronavirus cases in a day, raising concerns of a fresh wave amid the festive season.Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Friday said that the next three months are going to be decisive in determining the situation of coronavirus in the country and urged people to necessary precautions during the coming festival and winter season.The Covid-19 case fatality rate has further declined to 1.51 per cent.According to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a cumulative total of 10,13,82,564 samples have been tested up to October 23, with 12,69,479 samples tested on Friday.The country’s infection tally had crossed the 20 lakh-mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23 and 40 lakh on September 5. It went past the 50 lakh-mark on September 16, 60 lakh on September 28 and crossed 70 lakh on October 11.The US remains the country hit hardest by far by the novel coronavirus, with over 2.23 lakh deaths.

According to the WHO, the global figure now stands at over 4.12 crore cases and over 11.3 lakh deaths.

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