NEW DELHI, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- India's daily COVID-19 caseload Sunday slipped to 11,539, taking the total tally to 44,339,429 in the country, according to federal health ministry data.
The cases reported on Sunday mark a decrease in comparison to the daily caseload of Saturday 13,272.
With the reporting of fresh cases, India's active caseload currently stands at 99,879.
The country also logged 43 related deaths during the past 24 hours, pushing the overall death toll to 527,332 since the beginning of the pandemic, the ministry said.
With the increase in cases, the daily positivity rate stands at 3.75 percent and the weekly positivity rate was recorded 3.88 percent, the ministry data showed.
The ministry said so far 43,712,218 people have been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals, of whom 12,783 were discharged during the past 24 hours.
According to the federal health ministry, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the country has exceeded 2 billion doses and over 882 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country.
A cumulative total of 882,495,963 samples have been tested up to August 20, the Indian Council of Medical Research said Sunday. Out of these 307,680 tests were conducted on Saturday alone.
Health officials attribute the surge in new cases to people letting their guard down and not following social distancing norms.
Recently India's federal health ministry wrote to the seven states including the capital Delhi asking them to ensure adequate testing, promote COVID-19-appropriate behaviour and increase the pace of vaccination to contain the ongoing increase in cases.
On Wednesday India's civil aviation watchdog - Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) asked airlines to ensure that passengers wear masks inside planes and maintain hand hygiene in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases.
A local television news channel last week quoted Dr N K Arora, who is part of the government's COVID-19 task force saying the strains of Omicron circulating in Delhi are more infectious than the base strain that surfaced in January this year and along with it, the effectiveness of the vaccines in preventing infections has dropped 20 to 30 percent. ■