FILE PHOTO: A healthcare worker wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) takes a swab from a migrant worker, who returned to Delhi from his native state, for a rapid antigen test at a bus terminal, amidst the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in New Delhi, India, August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India reported 76,472 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, slightly lower than the record breaking numbers of the past couple of days, but extending a run that has made the country’s outbreak currently the world’s worst.
India has reported a total of 3.46 million cases during the pandemic, a tally that places them behind the United States and Brazil in terms of total caseload. However, the south Asian country has reported higher single-day case rises than both those countries for almost two weeks.
India’s death toll rose by 1,021 to 62,550, data from the federal health ministry showed, even as local media reported that some nationwide restrictions on travel could be eased from next week.
The government might allow underground train networks to partially reopen, local media reported, an easing that Delhi’s chief minister has said is necessary to get the city back to full speed.
The western Indian state of Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital Mumbai, recorded 331 fatalities, the steepest single-day increase among all states over the past two days.
On Friday, lawmaker H. Vasanthakumar from the country’s main opposition party Congress became the latest high profile figure to die from COVID-19, the infection caused by the novel coronavirus.
“The news of Kanyakumari MP, Shri H Vasanthakumar’s untimely demise due to Covid-19 has come as a shock,” Rahul Gandhi, a leading member of the Congress party said in a tweet late on Friday.
Reporting by Neha Arora; editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Jane Wardell
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles
