Till now, over 34,000 COVID-19 patients needed ICU care, over 9,000 were put on ventilators: Sources

New Delhi, Jul 2 () Of the over 6 lakh COVID-19 cases reported in the country till Thursday, 34,540 patients needed ICU care, 37,505 required oxygen and 9,272 were put on ventilators, health ministry sources said.

They said of the 2,26,947 active cases, 2.53 per cent are in ICU (till 6 pm) compared to 2.63 per cent the day before, 0.45 per cent are on ventilator support as against 0.44 per cent as on Wednesday while 3.07 per cent are on oxygen as against 3.13 per cent as on Wednesday.

Besides, the doubling time of coronavirus infection cases has improved to around 21.3 days in the last three days and 19.8 days in the last seven days, the sources said.

India's COVID-19 tally rose to 6,04,641 on Thursday with a single-day increase of 19,148 cases, just five days after it crossed the five-lakh post while the death-toll rose to 17,834 with 434 new fatalities, according to health ministry data updated at 8 am.

The recovered cases have exceeded the active cases by 1,32,912 as of Thursday.

"Timely clinical management of COVID-19 cases has resulted in more than 10,000 daily recoveries. During the last 24 hours, a total of 11,881 COVID-19 patients have been cured, taking the cumulative figure to 3,59,859. This further takes the recovery rate to 59.52 per cent," the health ministry said.

According to ICMR, a cumulative total of 90,56,173 samples have been tested up to July 1 with 2,29,588 samples being tested on Wednesday. PLB ZMN