COVID-19 in India live updates: Highest spike in cases yet again, 9304 new reported on Wednesday

The number of coronavirus cases in India has marked significant and consecutive highest jumps over a major part of the last two weeks.

On Wednesday, the total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection in India crossed the 2.07 lakh-mark, while the death toll breached the 5,800-mark as well. With this, India has now become the world's seventh worst-hit country in terms of coronavirus cases, according to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) COVID-19 tracker.

Maharashtra continues to be the epicenter of the coronavirus spread where the number of cases has witnessed an even large spike recently. According to the Health Ministry, Maharashtra has the highest number of cases with nearly 75,000 positive cases of infection while the death toll is approaching 2,600. As many as 2,587 COVID-19 cases were reported from the state on Wednesday.

Delhi is the worst-affected Union Territory with over 23,000 cases and 550 deaths while Gujarat has reported over 18,000 cases with more than 1,100 deaths.

Earlier last week, the Centre announced plans to unlock the country and issued guidelines for the opening of various businesses with social distancing norms. India has been under lockdown since March 25, which was to end on April 14, but was later extended till May 3 then further till May 17 and May 31.

The current phase of re-opening, called 'Unlock 1', takes an economic focus. The government intends on being smart about implementing the lockdown in select places so that the economic activity of the country, as a whole, does not take any more hits. The rising number of coronavirus disease cases for the past few weeks in the country has led the Centre to take this call in order to prevent COVID-19 from spreading further.

According to the new guidelines, all activities outside of containment zones have been allowed to resume in a phased manner from June 1. The guidelines will come into effect from June 1 and will be effective till June 30.

Here are all the latest coronavirus disease (COVID-19)-related updates in India on June 04, 2020 (Thursday):
09:15 IST Thursday, 4 June 2020

Recovery rate dips, now at 47.99%

09:15 IST Thursday, 4 June 2020

Total cases 2,16,919, recovered 1,04,107, death toll 6,075. New cases in 24 hours cross 9,000. Total new cases in the last 24 hours are 9,304, deaths 260. The highest death toll of 265 in 24 hours was on May 30

07:32 IST Thursday, 4 June 2020

A senior Ministry of Defence official has tested positive for #COVID19. After his test result came out, a large number of defence officials got themselves tested. Many officials who had come in contact with him have also gone in self-quarantine: Sources.