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India COVID-19 cases: Though the government has said India has the highest number of people who have fought off COVID-19 – almost 52 lakh now – it also cautioned that more than 90 per cent of the population was still vulnerable to the novel coronavirus disease.

India’s COVID-19 tally has crossed the 62-lakh mark with 80,472 new coronavirus cases and 1,179 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry data released this morning shows. The country now has 62,25,764 total cases of coronavirus, including 9,40,441 active cases and 51,87,825 recoveries. A total of 97,497 people have lost their lives to COVID-19 till now, inching closer to the 1-lakh mark. With 86,428 more people having fought off COVID-19, the number of total recoveries was near 52 lakh. On Tuesday, the government said the country has the highest number of people who have fought off the disease.

Here’s your 10-point cheat sheet to this big story:

1. India’s overall recovery rate is 83.3 percent, its daily positivity rate is 7.4 percent and its fatality rate stands at 1.5 percent. The active cases constitute about 15 percent of all cases, the government has said.
2. The government has said the country’s active cases have been declining consistently since September 15, and India was doing well in terms of cases per million population.
3. “We have only 4,400 cases per million population when several countries have over 20,000 cases per million. Our deaths per million are 70; other countries have over 600 deaths per million,” Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said on Tuesday in an address on India’s fight against COVID-19.
4. Cautioning that more than 90 percent of the country’s population was still vulnerable to the infection, NITI Aayog member (health) VK Paul said the emphasis is now on focused testing and tracking.
5. The Health Ministry conducted 10.86 lakh tests in the last 24 hours, over 11 lakh a day earlier. Till now, the country has conducted more than 7.4 crore tests.
6. India’s CRISPR ‘Feluda’ COVID-19 test that changes colour on detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be a cheaper, faster, and simpler alternative to an RT-PCR diagnosis, instead of the Rapid Antigen Test. The Feluda test is priced at ₹ 500 and can deliver a result in 45 minutes.
7. The center is expected to announce guidelines for the fifth phase of easing of COVID-related restrictions as the current phase, Unlock 4, ends today. Unlock 5 will likely come into effect from Thursday, October 1 – and is expected to stay in place till October 30.
8. Tamil Nadu has extended its coronavirus lockdown till October 31 but has also announced major relaxations, including the re-opening of rural weekly local markets, government training institutes, increase in the limit of crew members at a film.
9. India remains the second worst-affected country by the coronavirus pandemic, next only to the United States which has more than 72 lakh cases with 21 lakh deaths. Global coronavirus infections have soared past 3.38 crore, since the outbreak in China less than a year ago.
10. China has roped in more than a dozen countries – including Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Russia – to conduct the final phase trials of its experimental COVID-19 vaccines, as it looks to stay ahead in the international race to immunize global population as part of its charm offensive to gain goodwill.