India today has recorded its highest ever single-day COVID-19 death toll, with 4,187 deaths recorded within the past 24 hours. This comes as cases continued to rise and states imposed stricter lockdowns.
According to India’s health ministry, taking the overall death toll to just under 240,000, cases rose by 401,078, increasing the total since the start of the pandemic to 21.9 million.
Reuters reports medical experts saying the real numbers of COVID-19 cases and fatalities are likely to be far higher than official tallies.
India is yet to impose a national lockdown as it did during its first wave last year, but around half of all its states have imposed a total shutdown. The rest are under a partial shutdown.
Though it is the world’s biggest vaccine maker, India is struggling to produce and distribute enough doses to stem the wave of COVID-19.
Although the country has administered over 167 million vaccine doses, its rate of inoculation has fallen sharply in recent days and only around 2% of its 1.4 billion people have received the two doses needed to be fully immunised.
Reuters
