The second wave of COVID-19 in India appears to be showing no sign of slowing down. On Thursday morning, the Union health ministry said a total of 2,00,739 new COVID-19 cases had been reported in the past 24 hours. This is the highest single-day spike in cases ever since the pandemic began. Thursday's COVID-19 tally overtook Wednesday's figure of 1,84,372 COVID-19 cases.
Thursday's figure takes India's tally of COVID-19 cases to 1,40,74,564 cases.
India also recorded a total of 1,038 COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, the government announced on Thursday. This figure took the total number of COVID-19 fatalities to 1,73,123.
The total number of active COVID-19 cases now stands at 14,71,877.
Multiple states, including Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, had recorded their highest daily COVID-19 count on Wednesday. Uttar Pradesh recorded 20,510 cases, Delhi reported over 17,000 COVID-19 cases and Karnataka reported 11,265 cases.
This is the fifth straight day India recorded over 1.5 lakh COVID-19 cases and ninth straight day that over 1 lakh cases have been reported.
NDTV reported, "While the United States took 21 days to reach the daily count of two lakh daily cases from one lakh per day, India reached that grim milestone in just 11 days."
India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.
(With PTI inputs)
