India reports over 5,000 new Covid-19 cases, 15 deaths in 24 hours

India on Thursday logged 5,335 new Covid-19 cases, taking the active caseload to 25,587, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data.

The death toll increased to 5,30,916 with 15 deaths, the data updated at 8 am stated.

Of all Indian states, Kerala has the highest number of active Covid cases, that is, 8,229, followed by Maharashtra with 3,874. The daily positivity rate was recorded at 3.38 per cent and the weekly positivity rate at 2.79 per cent.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,41,79,712, while the case fatality rate stood at 1.19 per cent.

The Covid-19 cases in India has seen an upward trend in the past few days with the daily fresh infections ranging between 2,994 on April 1 to 3,824 on April 2 and 3,641 on April 3 now dropped to 3038 in the last 24 hours.

The Health Ministry has cautioned about a rise in weekly Covid-19 infections in six states in southern and western India, calling for enhanced surveillance, viral genome sequencing and efforts to detect and control any localised outbreaks.

The rise in infections is likely driven by a new coronavirus variant called XBB.1.16 identified in India earlier this month.

Is the next Covid wave coming?

Experts believe that while the spike in Covid cases is something to worry about, it's not alarming.

In a series of tweets, Covid data analyst, Vijayanand, explained that Omicron XBB 1.16 sublineage could be behind the recent surge in Covid-19 cases across the country.

''India covid cases trend shows small increase in last few weeks, the increase in trend is not rapid but slow, so this does not call for a new wave and its mostly due to Omicron XBB 1.16 sublineage. India had been dominated by other XBB sublineage before so no reason for concern,'' he wrote.

Following the Covid uptick, several states, including Tamil Nadu, have made face masks mandatory in hospitals.