Officials on Monday said India’s daily COVID-19 caseload dropped below the 10,000 mark.

Data released by the federal health ministry said 9,531 new cases of COVID-19 were reported during the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 44,348,960 in the country.

The cases reported on Monday marked a decrease compared to the daily caseload of Sunday 11,539.

With the reporting of new cases, India’s active caseload currently stands at 97,648.

The ministry added that India logged 36 related deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the overall death toll to 527,368 since the pandemic’s beginning.

The data showed that with the increase in cases, the daily positivity rate stands at 4.15 per cent, and the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 3.59 per cent.

The ministry said 43,723,944 people had been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals, of whom 11,726 were discharged during the past 24 hours.

According to the health ministry, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the country has exceeded two billion doses, and until Monday morning, 2,100,240,361 doses were administered.

A cumulative total of 882,725,509 samples had been tested up to August 21, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said Monday.

Out of these, 229,546 tests were conducted on Sunday alone.

Health experts said COVID-19 was a cyclical disease and would come in waves.

In the wake of the detection of new variants, the Indian government is focusing on improving booster dose coverage as the uptake for the third dose has been low.

Health officials attributed the surge in new cases to people letting their guard down and not following social distancing norms. 

(Xinhua/NAN)