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The country has overtaken the UK whose death tally stands at 46,791, according to the data by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
India’s confirmed cases reached 2,461,190 with a single-day spike of 64,553 in the past 24 hours, reports AP. The country reported 1,007 new deaths during this time.
More than 70 percent of the patients have recovered.
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The daily increase in newly reported infections was around 15,000 in the first week of July but jumped to more than 50,000 in the first week of August. The ministry cited its testing efforts, with more than 800,000 tests in a single day, taking cumulative tests to more than 26 million.
Health experts say it needs to be higher, given India’s population of 1.4 billion.
India’s two-month nationwide lockdown in late March kept infections low. But it has eased and is now largely being enforced in high-risk areas.
The new cases spiked after India reopened shops and manufacturing and allowed hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to return to their homes from coronavirus-hit regions.
Subways, schools and movie theaters remain closed.