Mamata Banerjee likely to skip PM's Covid-review meet with CMs

New Delhi, Apr 08: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee is unlikely to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Covid-review meet with chief ministers of all states and UTs. The virtual meeting is scheduled for today.

The Prime Minister had last interacted with chief ministers on March 17 during which he had expressed concern over the spike in COVID-19 cases in parts of the country and called for "quick and decisive" steps to check the "emerging second peak".

India registered a record single-day spike of 1,26,789 new COVID-19 cases, pushing its infection tally to 1,29,28,574, while the number of active cases too went upwards to breach the nine lakh-mark again, Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday showed.

The death toll due to the disease in the country increased to 1,66,862, with 685 new fatalities being reported in a day, according to the data updated at 8 am.

Registering a steady increase for the 29th day in row, the count of active cases has gone up to 9,10,319, which is 7.04 per cent of the total infections, while the country''s recovery rate has further dropped to 91.67 per cent, it stated.

The active COVID-19 caseload in the country was recorded at its lowest of 1,35,926 on February 12, comprising 1.25 per cent of the total infections.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 1,18,51,393, while the case fatality rate has further dropped to 1.29 per cent, the data stated.