India reports 3,66,161 new COVID-19 cases, 3,53,818 discharges in the last 24 hours

New Delhi, May 10: Union health ministry on Monday said that India's tally of COVID-19 cases has reached 22,662,575 and 366,161 more cases were detected from across the country in the previous 24 hours. This is for the first time after four straight days that India's COVID-19 count has risen by less than 400,000 fresh infections.

According to the health ministry, 3,754 more people succumbed to the viral disease, taking the related death toll to 246,116. The country's daily death toll was more than 4,000 in the last two days. Deaths contribute per cent of the nationwide infection tally.

The number of samples tested for the infection has reached 303,750,077, of which 1,474,606 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

With a daily high caseload in the ongoing second wave of the pandemic, and with experts warning of a potentially more hazardous third wave, several states and Union territories have gone into a lockdown mode.

On Sunday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal extended a lockdown in the Capital, which came into effect on the night of April 19 after being announced earlier in the day, till May 17.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana governments have also extended lockdown till May 17, while Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Puducherry will begin 14-day lockdown periods on the day.

Over the last few days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to various chief ministers on the Covid-19 situation in their respective states.