COVID-19: India records 8,954 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, active cases lowest in 547 days

COVID-19 Cases India: India recorded 8,954 new cases and 267 deaths in the last 24 hours, as per the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).

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On the vaccination frontier, the country has administered 124.10 crore vaccine doses so far under Nationwide Vaccination Drive. The recovery rate currently stands at 98.36 per cent, which is the highest since March 2020.

There have been 10,207 recoveries in the last 24 hours increasing the total recoveries to 3,40,28,506. India's active caseload stands at 99,023 , lowest in 547 days. The active cases account for less than 1 per cent of the total cases.

Now, the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified a new variant of SARS-CoV-2. It has been named as Omicron. The Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) is an independent group of experts that periodically monitors and evaluates the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and assesses if specific mutations and combinations of mutations alter the behaviour of the virus, WHO has informed.

On Tuesday, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Mansukh Mandaviya said at the Rajya Sabha that no case of COVID-19 Omicron variant has been reported in India.

The B.1.1.529 variant was first reported to WHO from South Africa on 24th November 2021. The epidemiological situation in South Africa has been characterized by three distinct peaks in reported cases, the latest of which was predominantly the Delta variant.

It has to be noted that India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakhs on August 23, 40 lakhs on September 5 and 50 lakhs on September 16. It went past 60 lakhs on September 28, 70 lakhs on October 11, crossed 80 lakhs on October 29, 90 lakhs on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19. India crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crores on June 2.