India witnessed 656 new Covid cases and one death on Saturday, according to data published by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Sunday.
The death was reported from the southern Kerala state, official data said, adding that the country currently had around 3,742 active Covid cases.
On Friday, the rise in India's single-day caseload stood at 752, the highest in seven months.
According to official statistics, the country's Covid-related death toll stood at over 533,300, with most of the deaths taking place during the deadly second wave which struck the South Asian nation in 2021.
As of Sunday, India's Covid case tally stands at over 45 million. At the same time, the Indian government has run the biggest government vaccination campaign in the world, administering the around 2.2 billion shots.
Rising Concerns About Omicron Subvariant
India's Health and Family Welfare Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told a high-level meeting chaired by himself on Thursday that Covid wasn't over yet, as he called for bolstering India's preparedness to deal with a recent spike in cases.
"Underlining the challenge posed by the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in some countries across the world such as China, Japan, South Korea, France and United States, Union Health Minister noted the importance of being prepared and remaining alert against new and emerging strains of COVID-19, especially in view of the upcoming festive season," said an official statement after the meeting.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said this week that the number of Covid cases across the world had witnessed a surge of 52 percent in the last 28 days.
Mandaviya also directed Indian officials to step up efforts for "strengthening the surveillance system for whole genome sequencing of positive case samples to track the variants through the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) network to ensure timely detection of newer variants", the statement noted.
The Indian minister has also called for strict enforcement of June 2022 "operational guidelines", which mandate "early detection, isolation, testing and timely management of suspected and confirmed cases to detect and contain outbreaks" of new variants.