The daily count of fresh COVID-19 cases in India jumped by to a massive 1,41,986 on Saturday, which represents a close to 15-fold rise from a week ago when the country had recorded around 10,000 fresh cases as the highly transmissible Omicron variant has now spread to 27 states.
This is the highest number of infections in the last seven month.
As many as 285 deaths were reported in the country over the last 24-hour period.
Maharashtra and Delhi continue to be the leading states as far as the number of confirmed Omicron cases are concerned.
Several states, including Delhi, have gone in for week-end curfews to contain the rapid spread of infections.
Delhi's had recorded 17,335 fresh cases of coronavirus on Friday with a positivity rate leaping to 17.73 per cent.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain said the data is reassuring because even though there are 30,000 active cases, only 1,390 are in hospital out of just 24 people are on ventilators.
As part of the more stringent measures to check spread of the disease, the government announced on Friday that people arriving in India from abroad will need to go through home quarantine for a week and undergo an RT-PCR test for Covid on the eighth day, according to the new rules that will come into effect from Tuesday.
The number of "at-risk" countries has been increased to 19, with nine more being added this month. European countries including the UK, South Africa and Brazil among the countries included in the list.
