Amidst a COVID-19 surge across the country, India on Thursday, 5 May, recorded an uptick in infections with 3,275 cases and 55 deaths in the last 24 hours, the Union Health Ministry said in its health bulletin.
With a daily positivity rate of 0.77 percent, active cases in the country stood at 19,179. Meanwhile, a total of 3,010 patients recovered as of 7 am on Thursday, 5 May, bringing the total number of recoveries in the country to 4,25,47,699.
A total of over 89.63 crore beneficiaries across the country have received their COVID-19 vaccine.
Meanwhile, Delhi on Thursday reported 1,365 new coronavirus cases, nearly as many as the 1,354 infections reported on Wednesday, 4 May. The positivity rate declined to 6.35 percent.
New COVID-19 Variant Detected
The Indian SARS-CoV2 Genomics Sequencing Consortium (INSACOG), a network of national testing laboratories set up by the Government of India, on Tuesday, confirmed the first case of Omicron sub-variant XE in the country.
However, health experts said that there was no need to panic as the variant was yet to show any signs of very high transmission or cause any severe symptoms.
This testing result comes weeks after an unknown variant infected two persons from Maharashtra and Gujarat.
According to the INSACOG bulletin, the XE variant is a recombinant, wherein the coronavirus is a mixture of two strains bound to emerge as one single virus transmitting among people.
The discovery of a new sub-variant of Omicron comes just months after the country suffered a third wave of COVID-19 in January.
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