6 LAKH, NOW; CATCHING UP WITH RUSSIA

India has crossed yet another grim threshold -- 6 lakh confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, primarily on account of spurt in Delhi and Maharashtra. The total is now 6,00,032 -- roughly 50,000 cases behind Russia, which is the third worst sufferer. Russia is preceded by Brazil, which has more than 14 lakh cases and the US, which has over 26 lakh cases.

HIGHEST DAILY COUNT IN MAHA: Meanwhile, with 198 new COVID-19 fatalities, the death toll in Maharashtra crossed the 8,000-mark on Wednesday. The number of new cases added to the state’s tally crossed the 5,000 mark yet again, with 5,537 cases being added on Wednesday – the highest count of new COVID-19 cases recorded on any day so far. The progressive count has now surged to 1,80,298 cases, with 8,053 deaths until now. Sixty-nine of the 198 deaths occurred in the last 48 hours, while 129 deaths are from last month, state officials clarified.

According to the BMC, there were 1,487 COVID-19 cases and 75 deaths in Mumbai, bringing the total count in the city to 77,658 cases, with 4,556 deaths until now. The mortality rate for the city is 5.61 per cent. Around 90 per cent of total infections in India are from ten states -- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telengana, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka. Delhi, though, has lately registered a slowdown. Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said Delhi has managed to slow down the spread of coronavirus, citing that the total -- 87,000-plus -falls short of the 1 lakh figure that the experts were expecting in June. Of the predicted 60,000 active cases by the end of June, Delhi has only around 26,000, he said.