India's COVID-19 cases top 26 million

India's COVID-19 tally surpassed the 26 million mark on Friday, at 26,031,991, with 259,551 new confirmed cases reported in the past 24 hours, said the federal Ministry of Health.

Meanwhile, 4,209 more deaths from the coronavirus epidemic were recorded, bringing the death toll to 291,331. After a decline on Thursday, the single-day deaths once again crossed the 4,000-mark.

There are currently 3,027,925 active cases recorded in the Asian country, a drop of 101,953 cases in the past 24 hours. The number of daily active cases has been on the decline over the past few days after a continuous surge since mid-April.

A total of 22,712,735 COVID-19 patients have been cured and discharged from hospitals so far in the country.

In a bid to curb the surge in infections, most of the Indian states have imposed night curfews and partial or complete lockdowns.

In January the number of daily cases in India had come down to less than 10,000, recording a 237-day low of 9,102 in late January.

Since a nationwide vaccination drive kicked off on January 16, over 191.8 million vaccine doses have been administered in India, with 1,482,754 doses administered on Thursday alone.

Presently the third phase of COVID-19 vaccination is going on, covering all people aged 18 years and above. However, an acute shortage of vaccines is being felt in India.

Meanwhile, the federal government has ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities across the country, with over 324.4 million tests having been conducted till Thursday, including 2,061,683 tests on Thursday alone, showed the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Friday.

Three COVID-19 vaccines are being administered to the people in India. The AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India (SII) was supplied to all states, and India's indigenous Covaxin vaccine manufactured by Bharat Biotech was supplied to 12 of the Indian states.

The third one is Russia's Sputnik-V vaccine.