India's COVID-19 cases per lakh lowest in the world: Govt

New Delhi, June 22: Amid spike in coronavirus cases, the central government has said the virus infection per lakh people in the country was among the "lowest" globally.

Citing the latest World Health Organisation report to support its claim the union health ministry said the WHO report released on June 21 shows that "India has one of the lowest cases per lakh population inspite of its high population density."

The ministry said, India's cases per lakh population are 30.04 while the global average is more than its triple at 114.67. On the other hand, the US has 671.24 cases per lakh population while the metric for Germany, Spain and Brazil is 583.88, 526.22 and 489.42 respectively.

The low figure is a testimony to the graded, preemptive and proactive approach the Indian government along with the states and union territories (UTs) took for the prevention, containment and management of coronavirus, the ministry stated.

India on Monday added 14,821 new COVID-19 cases pushing the infection tally to 4,25,282, while the death toll rose to 13,699 with 445 new fatalities, according to Union Health Ministry data.

The country crossed the four lakh-mark on Sunday eight days after recording three lakh COVID-19 cases and has witnessed a surge of 2,34,747 infections from June 1 till 22.

India registered over 10,000 cases for the 11th day in a row.

The number of recoveries also continued to surge with 2,37,195 patients cured so far, while there were 1,74,387 active cases, according to the updated official figures at 8 am.

One patient has migrated.