NEW DELHI : India saw a record single-day jump of 40,425 COVID-19 cases, pushing its tally past the 11-lakh mark on Monday, while the total number of recoveries crossed 7 lakh, according to the Union Health Ministry data.
The death toll due to the disease rose to 27,497 with 681 fatalities reported in one day. The data updated at 8 am on Monday showed that the total number of COVID-19 cases stands at 11,18,043. India’s COVID-19 tally crossed the 11-lakh mark, just three days after it crossed the ten-lakh mark.
The centre and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) asked states to ramp up their testing capacity. In a letter to the states and UTs, Union Health Secretary Preeti Sudan and ICMR DG Dr Balram Bhargava have asked the states to add more labs and enhance the existing testing capacity of the approved labs.
There are 3,90,459 active cases in the country, while 7,00,086 people have recovered and one person has migrated. The recovery rate stands at 62.62 per cent. This is the first time that India has reported more than 40,000 infections.
Meanwhile, the director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Professor Randeep Guleria spoke on vaccine trail amid coronavirus pandemic. He said, “Phase 1 of vaccine trial will be done on healthy people aged between 18-55 years who have no co-morbidity.” “A total of 1,125 samples have been collected of which 375 will be studied in first phase and in second phase 750 people will be recruited between 12-65 years,” AIIMS Director added.
While, Delhi’s Minister of Health, Satyendar Jain, on July 20 reacted to reports of community spread in the national capital. He said, “There is spread in community, now it’s very technical to say either it’s local or community spread. Source of many (COVID-19 positive patients) remains unknown after test. Let’s leave the technical battle on Centre to decide over community spread.”

The national capital on Monday (July 20) recorded 954 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the tally in the city to over 1.23 lakh, according to the Delhi health department’s bulletin.

With 35 corona virus deaths in the last 24 hours, the fatalities from the disease have now risen to 3,663. So far, 104918 corona virus patients have recovered from a total of 123747 cases, while there are 15166 active cases, the health bulletin further said.
Delhi, however, has witnessed a big drop in the new COVID-19 cases. For the first time since May 27, less than 1000 cases have been reported in the past 24 hours.
For the last nine days, fresh cases were being reported in the range of 1,000-2,000 consecutively. The capital has also witnessed a recovery rate of 84.78%, while the death rate stands at 2.96%.

Earlier on Friday, the city had reported 26 deaths, the lowest single-day COVID-19 fatality count since June 9. The number of fresh cases on Friday stood at 1,462.
Delhi had crossed the 1,000-mark in COVID-19 tally on April 11, while 1,211 fresh cases were reported on June 19. On June 23, Delhi had reported the highest single-day spike of 3,947, till date.