India on Sunday recorded 78,761 cases of the coronavirus disease in the last 24 hours, according to the Union health ministry data. This pushed the nationwide tally to 3,542,733.

The number of active cases in the country stand at 7,65,302, while the death toll has reached 63,498. The health ministry update on Sunday said that 948 people died due to Covid-19 in the last 24 hours.

The ministry, meanwhile, said on Saturday that the country’s recovery rate has reached 76.47 per cent which it said has been made possible by the strategic policy of “testing aggressively, tracking comprehensively and treating efficiently” in supervised home-isolation, facility-isolation and hospitals.

The case fatality rate (CFR) has also been low when compared to the global average. It is on a continuous decline and currently stands at 1.81 per cent, the health ministry said.

A significant feature of India’s management of Covid-19 cases is the growing rate of recovered patients. A higher number of patients are recovering and being discharged from hospitals and home isolation, it highlighted.

Health minister Harsh Vardhan chaired a meeting of the group of ministers on Covid-19 on Saturday where he said that India has one of the lowest cases per million and deaths per million compared to the global average of 3,161 cases and 107.2 deaths, respectively.

The meeting was informed that as of Saturday, eight states – Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha and Telangana – contribute to around 73% of the active caseload of the country.

Seven states – Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal – account for 81% of total Covid-19 deaths, the health ministry data revealed.

On the Covid-19 vaccine front, Dr Vinod K Paul, chairperson of the empowered group-1 on medical emergency management plan, said that India was progressing satisfactorily. He further apprised the group of ministers of the process of Covid vaccine development in India and around the world.

As of now, 29 vaccine candidates, including two Indian ones, are in clinical trials; out of which six are in Phase 3.