Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his expanded Council of Ministers and told them that there is no space for complacency in regards to the  COVID situation in the country.

He urged them to take precautions during the interaction a day after the major Cabinet expansion and reshuffle.

Modi credited the country's frontline workers for combatting the pandemic with full vigour. "We are steadily vaccinating substantial numbers of our nation's population. Testing is also consistently high," he said.

"At such a time, there should be no space for carelessness or complacency. A single mistake would have far-reaching impacts and weaken the fight to overcome COVID-19," he added.

Modi said that with COVID numbers declining, people might want to go out. but he warned all ministers that everyone should remember that COVID was far from being over.

"As ministers, our aim should not be to instil fear but to request people to keep taking all possible precautions so that we are able to move beyond this pandemic in the times to come," the PM told the Council of Ministers.

India on Thursday recorded 45,892 new cases of Coronavirus and 817 deaths over the past 24 hours. The number of active cases in the country currently stands at 460,704.

About 365 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered so far in this vast country of over 1.3 billion people but total vaccination has so far covered only about 5 per cent of the eligible 900 million people. (SAM)