Coronavirus Outbreak: COVID-19 tally in India nears 2 lakh-mark; death toll crosses 5,600

The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection in India crossed the 1.98 lakh-mark by Tuesday, while the death toll has reached the 5,600-mark as well. It is to be noted that India has now become the world's seventh worst-hit country in terms of coronavirus cases, according to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) COVID-19 tracker.

#CoronaVirusUpdates: #COVID19 India Tracker
(As on 02 June, 2020, 08:00 AM)

 Confirmed cases: 198,706
 Active cases: 97,581
 Cured/Discharged/Migrated: 95,527
 Deaths: 5,598#IndiaFightsCorona#StayHome #StaySafe @ICMRDELHI

Via @MoHFW_INDIA pic.twitter.com/Iaz24gXAFT

— #IndiaFightsCorona (@COVIDNewsByMIB) June 2, 2020

At 9:30 AM on this day, the COVID-19 tally in the country has reached 1,98,706 cases, which includes 97,581 active cases; 95,527 cured, discharged, or migrated patients, and 5,598 deaths.

According to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, as many as 8,171 new COVID-19 cases and 204 deaths were reported in the country in the last 24 hours, marking a significant spike. Yesterday, India had registered the highest spike in the COVID-19 tally so far, with as many as 8,392 cases and 230 deaths in the span of 24 hours.

Notably, the country has witnessed significant and consecutive highest jumps in the country's COVID-19 tally for the major part of these past few weeks.

Maharashtra continues to be the epicenter of the coronavirus spread where the number of cases has witnessed an even large spike recently. According to the Health Ministry, Maharashtra has the highest number of cases with 70,013 positive cases of COVID-19 infection and 2,362 deaths. As many as 2,358 COVID-19 cases were reported from the state in the past 24 hours.

Notably, Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, has become the hotbed of the coronavirus spread in the state where the number of cases has crossed the 41,000-mark and the death toll has topped the 1,300-mark as well. At 9:30 AM on this day, the COVID-19 tally in Mumbai showed 41,099 cases and 1,319 deaths.

One of the real challenges in Mumbai is controlling the disease contamination in Asia's biggest slum -- Dharavi, which is an extremely densely-populated region.

Maharashtra is followed by Tamil Nadu with 23,495 cases, which overtook Delhi due to a recent massive spike in the number of cases. The national capital is third on the list with 20,834 cases.

After Delhi comes Gujarat, where the COVID-19 figure stands at 17,217 with 10,780 patients recovered and 1,063 fatalities. Rajasthan has reported 9,100 cases of which 6,213 have recovered and 199 patients are dead.

Madhya Pradesh has reported 8,283 positive cases so far of which 5,003 patients have recovered and 358 patients have lost their lives due to the virus. In Uttar Pradesh, as many as 8,361 people have confirmed COVID-19, of which 5,030 recovered and 222 people succumbed to it.

In Kerala, which reported the country's first COVID-19 case, 1327 people have been detected positive for coronavirus so far.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has said that a total of 39,66,075 samples have been tested until now, of which 1,28,868 samples were tested in the last 24 hours.

The fifth phase of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19)-necessitated nationwide lockdown is currently in place. By now, several restrictions that were earlier enforced have currently been eased and citizens were seen returning to their normal lifestyles in many parts of the country.

The current phase of re-opening, called 'Unlock 1', takes an economic focus. The government intends on being smart about implementing the lockdown in select places so that the economic activity of the country, as a whole, does not take any more hits. The rising number of coronavirus disease cases for the past few weeks in the country has led the Centre to take this call in order to prevent COVID-19 from spreading further.

According to the new guidelines, all activities outside of containment zones have been allowed to resume in a phased manner from June 1. The guidelines will come into effect from June 1 and will be effective till June 30.