India recorded 8,439 new Covid cases today — 23 per cent higher than yesterday. This took the active caseload to 93,733, the lowest in 555 days. At least 195 deaths were also recorded in a day which took the death count to 4,73,952.

India’s active cases account for less than 1% of total cases and are currently at 0.27% which is the lowest since March 2020. A total of 129.54 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far under the Nationwide Vaccination Drive.

The overall recovery rate currently stands at 98.36 per cent, highest since March 2020 as India logged 9,525 recoveries in the past 24 hours taking the total number of recoveries to 3,40,89,137.

Meanwhile, a World Health Organization official said the Omicron variant does not appear to cause more severe disease than previous Covid variants, and is “highly unlikely” to fully dodge vaccine protections.