India records 55,342 new Coronavirus cases; COVID-19 tally crosses 71.7 lakh

New Delhi, Oct 13: Union health ministry on Tuesday said that India's COVID-19 tally touched 71.75 lakh with 55,342 fresh coronavirus cases recorded in the last 24 hours. This is the first time since August 18 that India has reported around 55,000 cases in a day, and second consecutive day when the total new infections were under 70,000 since the September surge.

The country also reported 706 deaths in this period taking the total COVID-related fatalities to 1,09,856. India has been reporting more than 900 coronavirus related deaths every day since early August.

In a tweet, the health ministry said, "India is showing a trend of declining average daily cases over the past 5 weeks."

According to the government, the average daily cases between September 9 and September 15 stood at 92,830, which came down to 90,346 between September 16 and September 22. The falling trend continued with 83,232 average new cases between September 23 and September 29 and in the corresponding two weeks, the average dropped to 77,113 and 72,576, data cited by the government showed.

In another tweet, the ministry hailed sustained testing efforts for the encouraging results. "The Centre in close collaboration with the State/UT governments has adopted a graded strategy of #COVID19 management and public health response. Sustained efforts of TEST TRACK TRACE TREAT TECHNOLOGY are progressively yielding encouraging outcomes," it said.