The head of the United Nations said on Sunday that the COVID-19 pandemic is the "greatest crisis of our age". UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened an online session of the World Health Summit with a call for worldwide solidarity in the global crisis and demanded that developed countries support health systems in countries that are short of resources.

The coronavirus pandemic is the overarching theme of the summit, which originally had been scheduled in Berlin. Several leaders and experts who spoke at the opening stressed the need to cooperate across borders.

"No one is safe from COVID-19. No one is safe until we are all safe from it," said German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "Even those who conquer the virus within their own borders remain prisoners within these borders until it is conquered everywhere," Steinmeier added. More than 42 million have been infected with the virus and over 1 million people have died of COVID-19. India is one of the worst-hit countries.  

On Sunday, officials said that COVID-19 cases reported in India over a span of 24 hours remained below 55,000 for the third consecutive day, while new fatalities recorded in one day dropped to 578 after almost three months, according to the Union Health Ministry's data.

India's COVID-19 caseload mounted to 78.64 lakh with 50,129 new infections being reported in one day, while the death toll climbed to 1.18 lakh with 578 new fatalities, the data updated at 8 am on Sunday showed.

The number of active cases remained below seven lakh for three days in a row, while the national recovery rate has risen to 90%. There are 6,68,154 active cases in the country which comprise 8.50% of the total caseload, the data stated.

A total of 70,78,123 people have recovered from the disease so far, pushing the national recovery rate to 90% while the case fatality rate stands at 1.51%.

With IANS and PTI inputs