New Delhi: India on Sunday continued to report a spurt of COVID-19 with 2,73,810 fresh cases, the highest single-day spike ever, pushing the nation’s overall COVID tally to 1.5 crore, according to the Health Ministry data released on Monday.

This is the fifth consecutive day that India has registered over two lakh COVID-19 cases taking the total tally to 1,50,61,919 cases. India on Sunday reported 2,61,500 new cases, 2,34,692 cases on Saturday, 2,00,739 and 2,17,353 cases on Thursday and Friday respectively. Meanwhile, a total of 1,619 people lost their lives of the infection in the last 24 hours, taking India’s death toll to 1,78,769 so far. The daily active cases tally rose to 19,29,329.

A total of 1,44,178 patients recovered in last 24 hours, taking the number of recoveries to 1,29,53,821 with a recovery rate of 86 per cent.

The Health Ministry stated that a total of 13,56,133 samples were tested in the last 24 hours. So far, a total of 26,78,94,549 samples have been tested in India. According to the data, a total of 12,30,007 people were also vaccinated in the same period, taking the total vaccination count to 12,38,52,566.

SENSITIVE REGIONS OF INDIA

Battling to restrict the huge COVID-19 spike, Maharashtra has announced six states, including Delhi and the NCR region, as places of "sensitive origin" in a move to stop the invasion of other variants of COVID into the state. Maharashtra Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte in an order issued on Sunday announced Kerala, Goa, Gujarat, Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR), Rajasthan and Uttarakhand as places of "sensitive origin".

PM MODI TO HOLD MEETING

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday will chair an important meeting on the COVID-19 situation at. The meeting comes amid a huge spike in the spread of infection, with several chief ministers complaining of a shortage of essentials like oxygen supply and medicines like Remdesivir, and seeking the Centre's help. Modi has been holding regular meetings to deal with the rising pandemic situation.

COVAXIN PRODUCTION TO INCREASE 10 TIMES BY SEPTEMBER

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Sunday said there will be a 10 times rise in Covaxin vaccine production by September while manufacture of Remdesivir jabs, a life saver against COVID-19, will be doubled to 74.1 lakh each month by May.

In a series of tweets, he also stated all support is being extended to states to fight COVID-19 and uninterrupted supply of oxygen and enhancement of healthcare infrastructure is being ensured.

Highlighting the steps taken to fulfil the requirement of remdesivir, Vardhan in a tweet said, "Production being doubled to 74.1L per month by May; Express permission given to 20 manufacturing plants to increase production; Exports prohibited; Prices capped; Strict monitoring to curb any malpractice, hoarding and black marketing.