NEW DELHI, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- India's daily COVID-19 caseload decreased to 4,858, officials said on Monday.
According to the health ministry data released on Monday morning, 4,858 new cases of COVID-19 were reported during the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 44,539,046 in the country.
The cases reported on Monday mark a decrease in comparison to the daily caseload of Sunday 5,664.
With the reporting of fresh cases, India's active caseload currently stands at 48,027.
The country also logged 18 COVID-19-related deaths during the past 24 hours, pushing the overall death toll to 528,355 since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, the ministry said.
With the increase in cases, the daily positivity rate stands at 2.76 percent and the weekly positivity rate was recorded 1.78 percent, the ministry data showed.
The ministry said so far 43,962,664 people have been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals, of whom 4,735 were discharged during the past 24 hours.
According to the health ministry, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the country exceeded 2 billion doses and 2,167,014,127 doses have been administered until Monday morning.
So far, over 891 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country.
A cumulative total of 891,753,120 samples have been tested up to Sept. 18, the health ministry said on Monday. Out of these 175,935 tests were conducted on Sunday alone.
The Indian government is focussing on improving booster dose coverage as the uptake for the third dose has been low. It is aimed at boosting the immunity of the people in the wake of the detection of new variants.
Health experts said COVID-19 is a cyclical disease and will come in waves. ■
