India's COVID-19 tally surpasses 15m

India's COVID-19 tally surpassed the 15-million mark, reaching 15,061,919, on Monday, revealed the latest data by the federal health ministry.

There was an increase of 273,810 COVID-19 cases during the past 24 hours. This is the third consecutive day when the country witnessed a single day spike of over 250,000 new cases.

Besides, as many as 1,619 deaths took place since Sunday morning, taking the total death toll to 178,769.

There are still a total of 1,929,329 active cases in the country, with an increase of 128,013 active cases through Sunday, as 12,953,821 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals so far across the country.

The COVID-19 figures continue to peak in the country every day, as the federal government has ruled out imposing a complete lockdown to contain the worsening situation. While some school examinations stand cancelled, others have been postponed in the wake of COVID-19 situation.

The number of daily active cases has been on the rise over the past few weeks. In January the number of daily cases in the country had come down to below-10,000. As many as 9,102 new cases were reported between January 25-26, which was the lowest in the previous 237 days. Prior to that, the lowest number of daily new cases were 9,304 registered on June 4, 2020.

January 16 was a crucial day in India's fight against the pandemic as the nationwide vaccination drive was kicked off during the day. So far over 123 million vaccination doses (123,852,566) have been administered to people across the country.

Meanwhile, the federal government has ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities across the country, as over 267 million tests have been conducted so far.

As many as 267,894,549 tests were conducted till Sunday, out of which 1,356,133 tests were conducted on Sunday alone, said the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Monday.

The national capital Delhi, which has been one of the most COVID-19 affected places in the country, witnessed nearly 25,500 new cases and 161 deaths through Sunday.

So far as many as 12,121 people have died in the national capital due to COVID-19, confirmed Delhi's health department.

Two types of vaccines are being administered to the people in India. While the "Covishield" vaccine, made by the "Serum Institute of India (SII)", was supplied to all states, the "Covaxin" vaccine, made by the "Bharat Biotech International Limited", was supplied to only 12 states.