India: Total COVID-19 death toll crosses 90K

By Cheena Kapoor

NEW DELHI, India (AA) - India’s total death toll crossed 90,000 mark early Wednesday as the country recorded 83,347 new COVID-19 cases and 1,085 more deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry data.

The national toll of confirmed infections stood at 5.6 million, including 90,020 deaths -- with 1.59% mortality rate.

Over 4.5 million patients have recovered from the disease in the country, pushing the recovery rate to 81.25%. The total number of active cases in the country has gone down from 1 million to 968,377 as the recovered patients exceeded active cases by 3.6 million.

The country has 17.7% of the global caseload and 19.5% of recoveries.

Seven states -- the western state of Maharashtra, northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Punjab, and southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu - constitute 63% of the active cases in the country and account for 65.5% of the total infections and 77% of fatalities.

On Tuesday, Delhi High Court, the principal civil court of state, said the state government’s direction to reserve 80% intensive care unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 patients citing the order is arbitrary, unreasonable, and violate Article 21 (protection of life and liberty) of the the country's constitution.

“Non-COVID patients cannot be expected to run around. Reserving 80% beds in the ICU will deny urgent care to seriously ill patients requiring vital surgical interventions and critical care,” said the court as reported by local media Bar and Bench.