NEW DELHI: India became the second country after the US to register 6 million Covid-19 cases on Sunday, amid signs that the pandemic could finally be slowing down in the country, at least for now. It took 12 days for India’s caseload to go from 5 million to 6 million, a day more than the previous 1-million rise.
In another positive sign, recoveries from the virus crossed 5 million, accounting for more than 82% of all cases. After 84,185 fresh infections were recorded on Sunday, India’s Covid-19 case count rose to 60,72,757 while deaths crossed 95,000 with 1,030 fatalities added to the toll.
Despite a slowdown in the spread of the infections over the past 10 days or so, India continues to add the highest number of daily cases in the world. The average daily case count this week (September 21-27) was more than 84,000 as over 5,90,605 fresh infections were logged during this period.

However, the weekly count had decreased by nearly 50,000 from the previous week, when 6,40,019 cases had been recorded. This was the second straight week of decline in cases, and the sharpest yet. Last week (September 14-20), Covid-19 cases had seen a drop of 5,000 from the previous seven days.
More hearteningly, for the first time in recent months, the week saw fewer deaths as compared with the previous one. While 7,654 deaths were recorded this week, the previous week’s tally was an all-time high of 8,175.
Two states witnessed their highest single-day spike in cases on Sunday — Kerala, which recorded 7,445 cases, and Rajasthan (2,084). Kerala recorded fresh highs in new cases for five days running. Karnataka reported 9,543 new cases, its highest count in 11 days while Tamil Nadu recorded its highest single-day tally in 22 days of 5,791, although the rise was modest over previous days.
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Maharashtra logged 18,056 fresh cases and 380 deaths, the first time in five days that the daily toll had come down below 400. Mumbai reported 2,261 fresh cases and 44 fatalities.
Karnataka’s Covid-19 infections crossed the 9,000 mark for the first time in nearly two weeks, taking its active case load past 1 lakh. Bengaluru alone reported 4,217 positive cases and 15 deaths, while Mysuru reported 952 new cases and one death.
For the fourth consecutive day, Chennai city recorded more than 1,000 fresh cases of Covid-19, accounting for 1,280 of the 5,791 cases in Tamil Nadu. The city also accounts for a quarter (10,656) of the 46,341 active cases in the state. The state recorded 80 deaths on Sunday, pushing the toll to 9,313 deaths. The case tally is 5,80,808.
After 11 days, Covid-19 cases in Odisha dropped to less than 4,000 on Sunday with 3,922 testing positive for the virus in the last 24 hours. The fresh cases have taken the total infection count to 2,09,374 in the state so far. Fourteen died of Covid, taking the death toll to 797.
Gujarat recorded 1,411 positive cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total case figure to 1.33 lakh. It was the fourth consecutive day where the state recorded 1,400-plus daily cases even as deaths dipped to 10 after a long time.