Active COVID cases down by over 30,000 in 24 hours first time in 61 days: Health ministry
New Delhi: The total active COVID-19 cases in the country dipped to 37,15,221 on Tuesday with a net decline of 30,016 cases being recorded in a span of 24 hours for the first time after 61 days, the Union health ministry said on Tuesday.
The total recoveries in a span of 24 hours too outnumbered the daily new COVID-19 cases after 61 days. The total active cases now comprise 16.16 per cent of the country's total coronavirus infections.
Thirteen states -- Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh cumulatively account for 82.68 per cent of India's total active cases, the ministry said.
The ministry said 24.44 per cent of the total active cases in the country have been reported from 10 districts including Bengaluru Urban, Pune, Delhi, Ernakulam, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Thrissur, Jaipur, Kozhikode and Mumbai.
Ten states -- Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi -- reported 69.88 per cent of the 3,29,942 new COVID-19 cases registered in a day, the ministry said.
Karnataka has reported the highest daily new cases at 39,305. It is followed by Maharashtra with 37,236 cases and Tamil Nadu which reported 28,978 new cases.
India's cumulative recoveries have surged to 1,90,27,304 with 3,56,082 recoveries being registered in a span of 24 hours.
Ten states account for 72.28 per cent of the new recoveries, the ministry said. The National Mortality Rate currently stands at 1.09 per cent, it said.
A total 3,876 deaths were reported in a span of 24 hours and 10 states account for 73.09 per cent of the new fatalities, it said.
Karnataka saw the maximum casualties (596) followed by Maharashtra (549), it said.
Meanwhile, the cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country has increased to 17.27 crore.
A total of 17,27,10,066 vaccine doses have been administered through 25,15,519 sessions, according to the provisional report till 7 am.
These include 95,64,242 healthcare workers (HCWs) who have taken the first dose and 65,05,744 HCWs who have taken the second dose, 1,40,54,058 frontline workers (FLWs) who have received the first dose and 78,53,514 FLWs who have taken the second dose and 25,59,339 beneficiaries in the age group of 18-44 years who have been administered the first dose.
Besides, 5,55,10,630 and 71,95,632 beneficiaries aged 45 to 60 have been administered the first and second dose respectively while, 5,38,06,205 and 1,56,60,702 people aged above 60 have taken the first and second dose.
According to the ministry, 5,24,731 beneficiaries in the 18-44 age group have received their first dose of COVID vaccine in the last 24 hours and cumulatively 25,59,339 across 30 states and UTs since the start of the phase-3 of vaccination drive.
Ten states -- Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh account for 66.7 per cent of the cumulative doses given so far in the country, it said.
More than 25 lakh vaccination doses were administered in a span of 24 hours, the ministry said.
As on day 115 (May 10) of the vaccination drive, a total of 25,03,756 doses were administered, the ministry said.
Across 18,542 sessions, 10,75,948 beneficiaries were vaccinated for the first dose and 14,27,808 people received their second dose of vaccine, it said.
Besides, 8,900 oxygen concentrators, 5,043 oxygen cylinders, 18 oxygen generation plants, 5,698 ventilators/BiPAP machines and more than 3.4 lakh Remdesivir vials received as part of global aid to India have been delivered/dispatched to states and UTs to strengthen and supplement their COVID response, so far.
The Union government is ensuring streamlined and fast delivery of the global aid to states and UTs through faster customs clearances, and use of air and road, the ministry said.
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Oath-taking ceremony of first BJP govt in Bengal on May 9; Modi, Shah likely to attend
Kolkata (PTI): The oath-taking ceremony of the first BJP government in West Bengal will be held at Brigade Parade Ground here on May 9, marking the saffron camp’s arrival in power in a state after decades on the political fringes.
The ceremony, scheduled to begin at 10 am, is expected to witness the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president Nitin Nabin, several Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP- and NDA-ruled states, party sources said.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced on Wednesday.
Even as the BJP leadership kept its cards close to the chest on the chief ministerial face, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as a frontrunner in internal discussions after cementing his position as the party’s principal mass leader in Bengal politics.
Adhikari, once among Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the TMC’s rural expansion in districts such as Purba Medinipur, crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections and went on to defeat Banerjee in Nandigram in one of Bengal’s fiercest political battles.
Five years later, he again found himself at the centre of Bengal’s political churn by beating Banerjee in her own turf at Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes.
Other names for the CM post doing the rounds include Bhattacharya, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar and former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, though party insiders indicated that the leadership was inclined towards projecting a “bhumiputra” face rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural ethos.
During the campaign, Shah repeatedly asserted that the BJP’s chief minister in Bengal would be a “son of the soil”, born and educated in the state, in an attempt to blunt the TMC’s sustained attack that the BJP represented an “outsider” political culture alien to Bengal’s social and intellectual traditions.
The BJP bagged 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress’s uninterrupted 15-year rule and scripting the saffron party’s biggest breakthrough in a state where it once struggled to open its electoral account.
Significantly, the swearing-in ceremony will be held on the 25th day of Baisakh in the Bengali calendar — observed across the state as Rabindra Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore — lending the event a deeper cultural symbolism.
According to BJP leaders, the choice of the date is aimed at embedding the party’s historic rise within Bengal’s cultural imagination and countering the long-standing perception battle over identity and belonging.
Over the last decade, the BJP has steadily attempted to appropriate and reinterpret icons of Bengal’s cultural nationalism — from Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee — as part of a broader ideological effort to expand its emotional and political footprint in the state.
Party insiders said the leadership was also conscious of the need to balance Bengal’s competing regional aspirations while choosing the chief ministerial face, with discussions also taking place around whether greater representation should be accorded to north Bengal, a region where the BJP has made substantial electoral gains over successive elections.
A meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs has been convened on May 8 evening, party sources said, though the leadership remained tight-lipped over the final choice.
The Brigade Parade Ground ceremony is expected to mark not merely a transfer of power, but a defining moment in Bengal’s political history, the culmination of the BJP’s long ideological and organisational march from the margins to the centre of power in a state that had for decades resisted the saffron surge seen elsewhere in India.
