NEW DELHI: India recorded close to 20,000 COVID-19 cases in a single day for the first time on Sunday, taking the tally to 5,28,859, while the death toll rose to 16,095, according to the Union Health Ministry data.
The data updated at 8 am showed 19,906 new cases, while 410 persons succumbed to the disease in the last 24 hours. This is the fifth consecutive day that coronavirus infections have increased by more than 15,000. The country saw a surge of 3,38,324 infections from June 1 till date.
The number of active cases stands at 2,03,051, while 3,09,712 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, according to the updated data. “Thus, around 58.56 per cent patients have recovered so far,” an official said. The total number of confirmed cases include foreigners.
According to the ICMR, a cumulative total of 82,27,802 samples have been tested up to June 27 and 2,31,095 samples have been tested on Saturday.
Meanwhile, a doctor of the Delhi government-run LNJP Hospital who was in the frontline in the war against COVID-19 died of the disease in the ICU of a private facility on Sunday, officials said. The 52-year-old was a consultant anaesthesiologist at the LNJP, which is a dedicated COVID-19 facility. He died in the morning at the Max hospital in Saket, where he was admitted for the last two weeks. He was a frontline anesthesia specialist who contracted COVID-19 infection while on duty. (PTI)
He tested positive on June 6, when he had mild symptoms and was shifted to a quarantine facility. His symptoms aggravated on June 7 and he was admitted in the Intensive Care Unit of the LNJP Hospital,” the LNJP Hospital said in a statement. The doctor was shifted to the Max Hospital in south Delhi on June 8 on his request, the statement said. “He lost the battle today after a valiant fight,” a senior official of the LNJP Hospital said. He was Specialist, Grade I, in the Department of Anesthesia at the LNJP Hospital, the statement said. Sources at the Max Hospital said the doctor died in the ICU of Max Smart, a dedicated COVID-19 facility in Saket. Several hundreds of healthcare workers have been infected with COVID-19 till date in Delhi. A doctor from the Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in Okhla in south Delhi had recently died of the novel coronavirus infection. A 39-year-old doctor from Odisha died of COVID-19 in the ICU of the Delhi government-run Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital on June 20. PTI
