India reports 1,574 new COVID-19 cases

NEW DELHI, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- India recorded 1,574 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total tally to 44,650,662, showed data released by the federal health ministry on Saturday.

The daily caseload marked a decline from the 2,208 cases reported on Friday. With the reporting of fresh cases, India's active caseload currently stands at 18,802.

The South Asian country also logged nine more COVID-19 related deaths during the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 529,008 since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the federal health ministry.

Currently for India the daily positivity rate stands at 0.95 percent, and the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 1.11 percent, the ministry data showed.

The ministry said a total of 44,102,852 COVID-19 patients have been cured and discharged from hospitals in India, including 2,161 new recoveries recorded in the past 24 hours.

According to the health ministry, until Saturday morning a total of 2,196,218,338 doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in India. Meanwhile, a total of 900,725,697 samples had been tested for COVID-19 in the country, and on Friday 165,901 tests were conducted.

At present the Indian government is focusing its anti-coronavirus efforts on improving the booster dose coverage as the uptake for the third dose has been low in the country.