A total of 10,753 new COVID-19 cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours in the country, marking a marginal dip from Friday’s count of 11,109 cases, as per the daily bulletin released by the Union Health Ministry.

On Thursday, India recorded 10,158 new Covid cases. The active caseload stood at 53,720 which is 0.12 per cent of the total cases, the union health ministry said on Saturday.

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The country witnessed 6,628 recoveries in the last 24 hours, which led total recoveries to 4,42,23,211, while the recovery rate currently stood at 98.69 per cent, the bulletin stated.

The daily positivity rate stood at 6.68 per cent while the weekly positivity rate was at 4.49 per cent, it said.

With 397 doses administered in the last 24 hours, a total of 220.66 cr vaccine doses have been administered so far under Nationwide Vaccination Drive, it said.

It further states that with 1,58,625 coronavirus tests conducted in the last 24 hours, the total number of tests conducted so far stood at 92.38 crore.

Amid the recent upsurge in Covid cases, medical experts have warned that the new XBB1.16 variant is able to evade the immune system of the people and the upcoming four weeks are very crucial.

“COVID-19 in India is moving towards the endemic stage. Covid will rise for the next 10 days, but cases will start reducing. Even though cases are increasing but hospitalisation is low. The current rise in cases is due to the XBB.1.16 variant which is a sub-variant of Omicron,” an official told ANI on Wednesday.

Amidst a gradual spike in COVID-19 cases in several states, mock drills were undertaken on April 10 and 11 in a total of 33,685 health facilities, including 28,050 government facilities and 5,635 private health facilities.

Earlier this month, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said lawyers are free to appear virtually in court in the wake of the rising number of Covid cases.

CJI Chandrachud said newspaper reports show that Covid cases are on the rise and if a lawyer wants to appear virtually before the court they can and the hybrid mode is also on.

“We saw newspaper reports on rising Covid cases. Lawyers can use hybrid mode. If you choose to appear online, we will hear you,” said the CJI.

The Supreme Court had reverted to the physical hearing mode of adjudication of cases from April 4, 2022, after taking into account the low infection rate and the number of Covid cases in Delhi and across the country.

The apex court has been successfully experimenting with the hybrid method — a combination of physical and virtual hearing for quite some time.

The Supreme Court has also started live-streaming the Constitution bench proceedings through the Supreme Court app and YouTube even after the resumption of physical hearings.