India has carried out nearly 900,000 coronavirus tests in a single day, a record for the country, as it fights a surge of Covid-19 cases.
India's health ministry said a record 899,000 tests were conducted in the 24 hours to Tuesday. Only the US has ever carried out more daily tests, conducting 926,876, on 24 July.
India's tests returned 55,079 cases positive cases, taking its total tally to more than 2.7 million - behind only the US and Brazil. The daily death toll of 876, took total fatalities in the country to 51,797.
The ministry said that even with such a high rate of testing, "the positivity has remained low", currently 8.81 per cent compared with the weekly national average of 8.84 per cent. The US has a 9 per cent test positivity rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Another report adds : Officials at the World Health Organization raised new alarms Tuesday that young people unaware of their infection are increasingly driving the spread of Covid-19 and the world is nowhere near herd immunity.
People in their 20s, 30s and 40s may be unaware they have an active case if their symptoms are mild or not present, but they are making up a greater share of the infected population, posing a risk to more vulnerable populations as they can still spread the virus, officials warned Tuesday.
"The epidemic is changing," said Takeshi Kasai, the WHO's Western Pacific regional director.
Others at the WHO briefing warned that the world population was still a long ways away from reaching herd immunity, the point at which enough of the population has antibodies to stop the spread of the virus.
WHO's emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said Tuesday that we should not live "in hope" of achieving herd immunity, adding, "This is not a solution and not a solution we should be looking to."
The global death toll from Covid-19 reached 778,373 on Tuesday, according to https://www.worldometers.info/tally.
Besides, the number of confirmed cases stood at 22.10 million, according to the tally.
The data showed that 14.84 million people made recovery from the virus infection.
Among the countries, the US has been the worst-hit with the highest recorded deaths of 170,492 patients and about 5,437,969 confirmed cases.
South American country Brazil, the second worst infected country, confirmed 3,359,570 cases and 108,536 deaths from coronavirus.
Coronavirus cases were first reported in China in December last year.
In South Korea, more than 400 coronavirus cases have been linked to a church in northern Seoul, the news agency Yonhap reported.
"After a member of Sarang Jeil church first tested positive on 12 August, 123 more were identified on Monday, raising the number of cases to 438, which includes 282 in Seoul," Park Yu-mi, the city's director of public health, said.
In New Zealand, 13 new cases of coronavirus were identified on Tuesday, all but one connected to the cluster in the city of Auckland, taking the total to 69.
Authorities also announced that one man had tested positive to a US strain of the virus. The man, who was a maintenance worker at a quarantine hotel in Auckland, tested positive on 16 July and attended two church services before he was diagnosed. His contacts are being traced, authorities said.
© 2026 - All Rights with The Financial Express
