Covid-19 update: With 16,432 new cases, India reports lowest daily in six months

India on Monday reported 16,432 fresh Covid-19 infections which is 500 less than what it recorded in the past six months. On June 23, India recorded 15,968 new cases and on June 24 it was 16,922.

The major development comes at a time when a new covid variant has entered the country with six UK returnee testing positive for the mutant.

Centre on Monday said in a statement that a total of six samples of 6 UK returnees have been found positive with the new UK variant genome.

Meanwhile, with the latest new additions, the total number of cases in the country reached 1,02,24,303. With 252 deaths in the last 24 hours, the fatality toll has reached to 1,48,153, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.

The total recoveries have reached 98,07,569 with 24,900 more people recuperating from the virus in last 24-hour. There are 2,68,581 active cases of the virus in the country.

The recovery rate stands at 95.83 per cent while the fatality rate is 1.45 as per cent.

A total of 16,98,01,749 samples have been tested for Covid-19 till now. Of these, 9,83,695 samples were tested on Monday: Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)

Here's some more updates related to covid-19:

*Former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Shanta Kumar's wife, Santosh Shailza, succumbed to COVID-19 in the early hours of Tuesday.

*Union Minister of State (MoS) for health and family Welfare, Ashwini Kumar Choubey has tested positive for Covid-19 and self-isolated himself at home on Monday evening.

* The Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of novel coronavirus, has started the emergency use of COVID-19 vaccine candidates.

*Beijing reported seven new locally transmitted coronavirus cases, health authorities in the Chinese capital city said on Tuesday.

*The Phase 3 trial of another investigational Covid-19 vaccine developed by biotechnology company Novavax, Inc., has started on Tuesday.

*Pune-based Serum Institute of India on Monday expressed hope at the possibility of Covid-19 vaccine - Covishield receiving the regulatory approval in "few days",

Meanwhile, the overall number of global coronavirus cases has topped 81.2 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 1.77 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University.