The Covid-19 positive cases in the country is maintaining upward trend over the past one week.
The country has reported over 16,488 cases in the last 24 hours taking the overall tally to 1, 10,79,979 on Saturday.
The positivity rate has been rising gradually, pushing it to 1.44 per cent.
As per the Ministry’s data, there are 1, 59,590 active cases at present after 12,771 patients were discharged in a day.
Meanwhile, 113 more deaths were recorded in the past 24 hours, taking the overall toll to 1, 56,938, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.
The experts have expressed a number of possibilities which could be owed to the stride ranging from lax attitude of people towards following Covid potocols to likability of “mutations and new strains” causing the surge, as has been studied by the laboratories involved in Covid detection across the country.
Last week, officials said that the average daily new infections for the last 15 days were oscillating between 9,000 to 12,000 while the deaths were between 78 to 120.
On February 9, India had reported 9,110 new cases, the lowest this year so far. Last year, the lowest 9,633 cases were recorded on June 3.
Till now, 1,07,36,451 persons have been discharged. The recovery rate has reduced to 97.14 per cent, a change of 0.3 per cent from the previous day.
Meanwhile, the fatality rate remains 1.42 per cent.
On Friday, around 90 per cent of the new cases came from six states — Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Karnataka and Gujarat, while six states accounted for 84.62 per cent of the new deaths, which included Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka.
The Ministry also informed that 7,73,918 samples were tested on Friday.
The cumulative tests done by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) so far stands at 21,54,35,383.