The surge raised India's tally to over 3.5 million, and came as the government announced the reopening of the subway in New Delhi, the capital. It also will move ahead with limited sports and religious events next month.
A country of 1.4 billion people, India now has the fastest-growing daily coronavirus caseload of any country in the world, reporting more than 75,000 new cases for four straight days.
A significant feature of India’s COVID-19 management, however, is the growing rate of recovered patients. On Sunday, the recovery rate reached nearly 76.5%.
The Health Ministry credited its strategic policy of “testing aggressively, tracking comprehensively and treating efficiently” in supervised home isolation and hospitals.
But COVID-19 fatalities continue to mount and soon India will have the third-largest death toll, after the United States and Brazil, even though it has had far fewer deaths than those two countries.
India is now reporting around 1,000 COVID-19 deaths every day. So far, more than 63,000 Indians have died from the disease.
Even as eight states remain among the worst-hit regions and contribute nearly 73% of the total infections, the virus is now spreading fast in the vast hinterlands, with health experts warning that September could be the most challenging month yet. Early last week, members of a small secluded tribe in the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands tested positive for the coronavirus.