NEW DELHI, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- India recorded 14,917 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 44,268,381, data released by the federal health ministry on Monday showed.
With the reporting of new cases, India's active caseload currently stands at 117,508.
The South Asian country also logged 32 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 527,069 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Currently the daily positivity rate stands at 7.52 percent and the weekly positivity rate is recorded at 4.65 percent, the ministry's data showed.
The health ministry said that so far 43,623,804 COVID-19 patients have been cured and discharged from hospitals in the country, including 14,238 new recoveries.
According to the ministry, health authorities have so far administered over 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines, and conducted over 880 million tests for COVID-19 across the country, including 198,271 tests conducted on Sunday.
With the COVID-19 daily cases on the rise in th capital region of Delhi, the health authorities have started forming teams to strictly enforce the wearing of face masks and impose fines on the violators.
On Saturday the state government in northern India's Punjab made the wearing of face masks mandatory in public places.
After the detection of infections with the Omicron sub-variants, the Indian government is currently focusing on improving the coverage of the COVID-19 vaccine booster dose as the uptake for a third dose has been low.
Health officials have attributed the surge in new cases to people letting their guard down and not following social distancing norms.
Local governments in various states have issued advisories urging people to wear face masks and follow COVID-19 protocols at mass gatherings. ■
