India records over 10,000 daily Covid cases for first time in months

India's spike in Covid cases continue despite reduced fatality due to record vaccinations. The world's fifth largest economy on Thursday reported 10,158 new Covid cases, according to the country's health ministry data.

Theactive Covid caseload currently stands at 44,998 in India.

Meanwhile, top health ministry officials said that Covid-19 is moving towards an endemic stage in India.

Covid's endemic moment: What does it mean?

Endemic refers to a disease outbreak which is consistently present but is limited to a particular region which makes it more predictable and manageable.

According to officials, even though Covid cases are increasing, hospitalisation remains low and it is expected to remain low due to maximalist vaccination in most parts of the country.

Health ministry officials said cases may keep rising for the next 10-12 days after which they will begin to subside. As the virus becomes endemic, it generates a large number of variants.

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Omicron, which was first detected in 2021, has been assigned over 1,000 sub-lineages since its detection, including XBB.1.16 and XBB.1.5. Dr N K Arora, co-chair of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), said XBB.1.16 is causing a surge in cases but hospitalisations haven’t gone up and even the deaths being attributed to the disease are mostly among people who have serious comorbidities.

Until January, only about 120 to 140 new cases were being reported daily.

But on Thursday, the country's daily Covid case-count crossed the mark of 10,000 for the first time in months.

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