The health ministry on Monday reported a single-day spike of 86,961 coronavirus cases in India, taking the country’s total caseload nearer to the 55 lakh-mark.

The country’s total caseload now stands at 54,87,480.Of the total tally, 10,03,299 are active cases while 43,96,399 have recovered after getting infected earlier.

India has one of the highest recovery rates in the world and now accounts for 19 per cent of all recoveries in the world.Meanwhile, fatalities due to the deadly virus have increased to 87,882 after 1,130 deaths in the last 24 hours.

It may be noted that India has one of the lowest Covid-19 fatalities in the world at 1.6 per cent of total cases.Follow coronavirus live updatesWith nearly 3 lakh active cases, Maharashtra continues to be the worst affected state due to Covid-19.

More than 32,000 people have died in Maharashtra, the highest among all other Indian states and UTs.Delhi, the national capital, is also reporting a high number of cases for the past few weeks.

However, the government has assured people that there is nothing to be concerned about and the high number of cases are only due to increased testing.India’s Covid-19 tally has been rising sharply since early August and it only lags behind the United States in terms of total cases; the US has over 68 lakh cases.The government has plans to further ramp up testing in the country to tackle the Covid-19 situation better.In what seems to be a positive development, the DGCI has approved the commercial launch of Feluda, which is an advanced CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) Covid-19 testing launched by Tata.The Tata CRISPR test matches accuracy levels of traditional RT-PCR tests with quicker turnaround time.

These tests are likely to replace the lesser reliable rapid antigen tests.

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