India's daily COVID-19 tally crosses 1 lakh after seven months; with 20,971 cases, Mumbai reports highest single-day spike

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India on Friday witnessed an exponential surge in COVID-19 cases after 1,17,100 fresh infections were recorded - a 28 percent jump from yesterday's 90,928 cases - as the virus continued to spread at an unprecedented pace, mostly driven by the Omicron variant. With this, the total caseload climed to 3.52 crore.

This is the first time in seven months since the nation's daily COVID-19 tally crossed the one-lakh mark. India had reported 1,14,460 cases on 6 June, 2021.

India has confirmed 3,007 cases of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant from 27 states and Union territories so far. While Maharashtra tops the chart with 876 cases, Delhi has detected 465 cases. Meanwhile, Karnataka has 333 cases, Rajasthan 291, Kerala 284 and Gujarat 204.

Let's take a look at the COVID-19 figures in the major metro cities today:

Delhi:

Delhi on Friday recorded 17,335 fresh cases, the highest single-day rise since 8 May 2021, and nine deaths, while the positivity rate mounted to 17.73 percent, according to data shared by the city health department.

This is a significant rise from Thursday when the city recorded 15,097 new cases at a positivity rate of 15.34 percent.

This is the highest single-day rise since 8 May when 17,364 cases were logged with a positivity rate of 23.34 percent. As many as 332 deaths were also recorded on that day.

With the latest addition, the cumulative caseload has gone up to 15.06 lakh while the toll rose to 25,136. The number of active cases in the capital now stands at 39,873.

Mumbai

Mumbai recorded 20,971 new infections, the highest one-day spike to date, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said. Maharashtra today reported 40,925 new cases.

The city also saw six deaths due to the pandemic, highest in a day in the last two months, said a BMC release.

The cases went up by 790 compared to Thursday. The caseload of the country's financial capital rose to 8,74,780, while toll reached 16,394.

The slum-dominated Dharavi recorded 150 new cases on Friday, the highest since the pandemic began, a senior official of the BMC said.

This is the second day in a row that the densely populated locality reported 100-plus infections. During the second wave, Dharavi had reported 99 cases on 8 April, 2021.

The case tally of the area rose to 7,776 on Friday. Of these, 6,771 people have recovered from the infection, said Kiran Dighavkar, assistant municipal commissioner of G-North ward.

Speaking to a Marathi news channel, Mumbai municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said a new wave of the pandemic began from 21 December, 2021, when the city recorded 327 new daily cases. Since then, cases have risen 6,313.14 percent.

Chahal, however, maintained that there was no need for lockdown as the death rate, bed occupancy and medical oxygen demand were low.

Chennai 

Chennai contributed the maximum cases (3,759) of the total 8,981 fresh infections reported in Tamil Nadu on Friday. Other districts including Coimbatore (309), Vellore (223), Kancheepuram (185) also witnessed a sharp rise in cases.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai said that a Pongal event, to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on 12 January has been deferred due to COVID-19 restrictions.

However, it’s not clear if an event in Virudhanagar, where the PM will share stage with CM MK Stalin for the inauguration of 11 new medical colleges in the state, will take place as planned.

Bengaluru 

The spike in cases in Karnataka was driven by Bengaluru Urban which contributed 6,812 infections of the 8,449 cases reported in the state on Friday.

Other districts too reported fresh cases, including 219 in Mysuru, 211 in Dakshina Kannada, 72 in Udupi, 148 in Udupi, 129 in Mandya and 114 in Belagavi, 98 in Kolar, 96 in Tumakuru and 89 in Hassan.

Seven-day home quarantine mandatory for international arrivals: Centre

The Union Health Ministry in a notification on Friday said that all international travellers will need to undergo seven-day mandatory quarantine on arrival in India, even if they test negative for COVID-19 at the airport.

They will then have to undertake an RT-PCR test on the 8th day of arrival in the country.

Over 150 crore vaccines administered so far

The cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in India surpassed 150-crore mark on Friday.

Terming it a "historic achievement", Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said it could be attained only because of the relentless hard work of healthcare workers under the "able leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi".

"When everyone makes efforts together then any goal can be achieved," Mandaviya said in a tweet in Hindi.

With inputs from agencies

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