Coronavirus Outbreak: With nearly 10,000 cases in a day, India crosses Italy as 6th worst-hit nation; tallest spike yet

The coronavirus cases in India continue to spread rapidly as the country has marked significant and consecutive highest jumps in the COVID-19 tally over a major part of the last two weeks. With nearly 10,000 new cases reported in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 count on Saturday hit a new high - 2,36,657, overtaking Italy to take the sixth spot among countries with the highesr caseload of the virus.

At 9:30 AM on this day, the COVID-19 tally in the country has reached 2,36,657 cases, which includes 1,15,942 active cases; 1,14,073 cured, discharged, or migrated patients, and 6,642 deaths.

According to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, as many as 9,887 new COVID-19 cases and 294 deaths were reported in the country in the last 24 hours, marking a significant spike. In fact, this is the highest spike in the tally till now.

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 80,229 positive cases of COVID-19 infection and 2,849 deaths. As many as 2,436 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 46,000-mark and the death toll has topped the 1,500-mark as well. At 9:30 AM on this day, the COVID-19 tally in Mumbai showed 46,080 cases and 1,519 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 28,694 cases, which overtook Delhi due to a recent massive spike in the number of cases. The national capital is third on the list with 26,334 cases.

After Delhi comes Gujarat, where the COVID-19 figure stands at 19,119 with 13,011 patients recovered and 1,190 fatalities. Rajasthan has reported 10,084 cases of which 7,359 have recovered and 218 patients are dead.

Madhya Pradesh has reported 8,996 positive cases so far of which 5,878 patients have recovered and 384 patients have lost their lives due to the virus. In Uttar Pradesh, as many as 9,733 people have confirmed COVID-19, of which 5,648 recovered and 257 people succumbed to it.

In Kerala, which reported the country's first COVID-19 case, 1700 people have been detected positive for coronavirus so far.

Earlier last week, the Centre announced plans to unlock the country and issued guidelines for the opening of various businesses with social distancing norms. India has been under lockdown since March 25, which was to end on April 14, but was later extended till May 3 then further till May 17 and May 31. 

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.

The Union Health Ministry on Thursday released the standard operating procedure (SOPs) for malls, restaurants and hotels as they plan to open these establishments under relaxed guidelines from June 8. 

The SOPs include measures like allowing only asymptomatic staff and guests inside the premises and proper crowd management.