The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 3,163 and the number of cases climbed to 1,01,139 in India on Tuesday, registering an increase of 134 deaths and 4,970 cases of coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours since Monday 8 am, according to the union health ministry.
However, a PTI tally of figures announced by various states and union territories, as of 6.45 PM, showed a much higher number for the confirmed infections at 1,01,688.
More than 39,000 patients have recovered too, still leaving over 59,000 active cases in the country -- which is the seventh largest globally after the US, Russia, Brazil, France, Italy and Peru.
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The Health Ministry said that for every one lakh population, there are 7.1 coronavirus cases in India so far, as against 60 globally.
Referring to data from the World Health Organisation, the ministry said 45,25,497 COVID-19 cases had been reported worldwide till Monday, which is about 60 cases per lakh population.
Among the countries with a very high load of coronavirus cases, the US, with 14,09,452 instances of the infection so far, has around 431 cases per lakh population. In the UK, this ratio is 494 cases per lakh and for Italy it is 372.
Officials also cited data about India having taken 64 days for the count of confirmed cases to increase from 100 to one lakh, which was more than double the time taken by countries like the US and Spain. According to the data sourced from the health ministry and Worldometers, the coronavirus infection cases increased from 100 to 1,00,000 in the US in 25 days, while it took 30 days for the cases to reach the 1 lakh-mark in Spain.
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There are concerns that some parts of the country, including in Kerala, Goa and North-East, are seeing the second or third phase of the virus outbreak as they had almost flattened the curves till a few days ago before people from other states or countries started arriving there.
Kerala on Tuesday recorded 12 more COVID-19 cases, all being returnees from overseas and other states, taking the total active patients to 142. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the rise was expected but asserted community transmission has not happened so far.
