Coronavirus outbreak: With 4,970 new COVID-19 cases, India crosses 1 lakh-mark

New Delhi, May 19: The Union Health Ministry on Tuesday said that India reported 4,970 new cases of the coronavirus cases and 134 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the tally past the 1,00,000-mark. This severe increase in numbers comes nearly three months after the coronavirus pandemic began in the country. It can also be seen that it is the second day of the fourth phase of the nationwide lockdown.

Also, the cases of COVID-19 in India have doubled to over 1,00,000 from 50,000 in less than two weeks.

On Monday, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said that India has successfully managed to delay the peaking of the curve by imposing lockdown and other public health measures in a timely manner.

"There are several mathematical models which are predicting the course of the pandemic in India, but till now, we have managed to avoid the dramatically high numbers that several models predicted," Harsh Vardhan said.

Some of India's worst-affected state is Maharashtra, now has more than 35,000 cases and 1,249 fatalities, while Tamil Nadu and Gujarat have reported their COVID-19 tally is more than 11,000.

It can also be seen that Delhi has over 10,000 COVID-19 cases so far as 168 people have succumbed to the disease.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the national testing rate for India is 1,540 tests per million population.