Cheena Kapoor
23 September 2020•Update: 23 September 2020
NEW DELHI, India
India’s 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.
Owing to the rising case numbers, the Indian parliament, a week ahead of its schedule, will conclude its monsoon session on Wednesday, confirmed Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V. Muraleedharan in the Upper House.
“I have to inform the members that the government has decided to recommend the adjournment of the House sine die today. But some important legislative business passed by the Lok Sabha [the Lower House] has to be disposed off before adjournment of the House sine die,” he said as shown in the live telecast.
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.
The rising coronavirus cases have taken lives of 234 police personnel of the western state of Maharashtra. With 253 new infections and another five deaths in the last 24 hours, the total cases in the state force rose to 21,827, including 3,435 active cases.
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.
