The total number of Indians to receive at least one shot of the Covid-19 vaccine shot past the 30 crore mark on Wednesday with close to 65 lakh doses being administered on the third day of the PM’s free vaccine scheme for everyone in the country, health ministry data released on Thursday show. 

The new phase of universalization of COVID-19 vaccination commenced from 21 June. The Union Government is committed to accelerating the pace and expanding the scope of the vaccination programme throughout the country, the health ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, India reported 54,069 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours which has been less than critical 1 lakh mark for 17 continuous days now.

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As more people are recovering from COVID-19 infection, India’s daily recoveries continue to outnumber the daily new cases for 42 consecutive days now.  As many as 68,885 recoveries were registered in the last 24 hours which exceeded the number of fresh cases by 14,816.

With a substantially ramped up testing capacity across the country, a total of 18,59,469 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours in the country.

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While on one side testing has been enhanced across the country, the weekly positivity rate has fallen to 3.04% while the daily positivity rate stands at 2.91% on Thursday. It has remained less than 5%, the safe limit benchmark of the WHO, for 17 consecutive days now.