'Spreading at a much faster rate': Coronavirus updates of the last 24 hours

India on Sunday reported 2,61,500 new Covid-19 cases and 1,501 deaths from the disease, according to health ministry data marking the worst ever daily spike. The country has 1,47,88,109 cases in total and 1,77,150 fatalities.

India's second wave of Covid-19 infections is "spreading at a much faster rate", said the health minister on Saturday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked officials on Saturday to use the pharmaceutical industry to meet the demand for medicines, especially remdesivir. 

The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France. The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal. It is bigger than Chicago (2.7 million) and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.