India's Covid-19 tally rises by 6,358; active caseload below 80k-mark

India's daily Covid-19 tally marginally dropped on Tuesday with 6,358 cases, pushing the overall cumulative number of infections to 34,799,691, according to the Union ministry of health family welfare.

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has now spread to 21 states and Union territories and the nationwide tally now stands at 653 as of Tuesday. Out of this, Maharashtra topped the list with 167 cases followed by Delhi with 165 cases, Kerala with 57 cases and Telangana has confirmed 55 cases.

The death toll jumped to 480,290 after 293 people succumbed to the viral disease, the ministry also informed.

The active caseload currently stands at 75,456 and accounts for 0.22 per cent of the total caseload. It is the lowest since the coronavirus pandemic began in the country in March last year, according to the ministry's data.

The recovery rate currently is at 98.40 per cent, the highest since March 2020. As many as 6,450 people have recovered in the last 24 hours from Covid-19. The total recoveries currently stand at 34,243,945, the ministry also said.

Meanwhile, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is set to hold a high-level review meeting to review the prevailing Covid-19 situation in the national capital. The chief minister is likely to discuss whether more travel and economic curbs are needed to control the spurt in cases amid the looming threat of the third wave of the pandemic.

Besides this, Kejriwal is also expected to decide on sounding the 'Yellow' alert and restrictions according to the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).

The 'yellow' alert is sounded when the Covid positivity rate stays over 0.5 per cent on two consecutive days. It involves restrictions like night curfew, closure of schools and colleges, alternate day opening of shops of non-essential items and halved seating capacity in Metro trains and public transport buses among others.