India on Wednesday recorded 45,892 new cases of COVID-19, the Union Health Ministry’s data released on Thursday showed. This has pushed the country’s tally to 30,709,557. As many as  817 COVID-19 patients died on Wednesday that has brought the total death toll to reach 405,028.

There are 460,704 active cases in the country, while 29,843,825 have recovered.

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A total of 425,225,897 samples have been tested for SARS-COV-2, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, till July 7. This includes 1,893,800 samples tested on Wednesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

India started its mass vaccination drive against COVID-19 on January 16. As per the latest count, 364,847,549 people have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

The country has approved four COVID vaccines — Astrazeneca’s Covishield, Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, Russia’s Sputnik V and the latest being USA’s Moderna. All these are two-dose vaccines.

Meanwhile, India, which was severely battered by the second coronavirus wave, has got some respite from the disease, with the daily number of cases witnessing a dip. However, experts have cautioned that the third wave might hit the country as soon as in August-September.

India is the second worst-hit country by the coronavirus pandemic. With more than 33.7 million cases and 606,216 deaths, the United States remains the worst hit. India is followed by Brazil, with over 18.9 million cases and 528,540 deaths, as per the count of Johns Hopkins University.

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The novel coronavirus that first emerged in central China in Decemeber 2019 has globally infected over 185 million people and killed more than three million of them.