Record 15,413 new cases in a day

New Delhi : Eight days after recording three lakh COVID-19 cases, India went past the four lakh-mark on Sunday with the biggest single-day spike of 15,413 new infections, while the death toll rose to 13,254 with 306 fatalities, according to Union Health Ministry data.

India took 64 days to cross the one lakh-mark from 100 cases, another fortnight to reach the grim milestone of two lakh cases and then in another 10 days, it went past the three-lakh mark.

The country has been registering record single-day spikes for the past four days.

The jump of 15,413 cases has taken India''s case load to 4,10,461.

The number of recoveries also continued to surge with 2,27,755 patients cured so far, while there were 1,69,451 active cases, according to the updated official figures at 8 am. One patient has migrated. The number of recovered patients has crossed the number of active patients by 58,305.

During the last 24 hours, a total of 13,925 COVID-19 patients have recovered, taking the recovery rate to 55.49 per cent amongst novel coronavirus patients. India registered over 10,000 cases for the 10th day in a row.

The country has witnessed a surge of 2,19,926 infections from June 1 till 21 with Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh among the top five states that have seen a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases.

Of the 306 fresh fatalities reported till Sunday morning, 91 were from Maharashtra, 77 from Delhi, 38 from Tamil Nadu, 20 from Gujarat, 19 from Uttar Pradesh, 11 from West Bengal, eight from Karnataka, six each from Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab, five each from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana, four each from Rajasthan, two each from Bihar, and one each from Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

India is the fourth worst-hit nation by the pandemic after the US, Brazil and Russia.

According to the Johns Hopkins University, which has been compiling COVID-19 data from all over the world, India is at the eighth position in terms of the death toll.

The health ministry said that as a concerted effort to expand the laboratory and testing infrastructure, the number of government labs has been increased to 722 and the number of private labs to 259. There are a total of 981 laboratories now.

The number of samples being tested everyday also continues to grow. In the last 24 hours, 1,90,730 samples were tested, while the total number of samples tested so far is 68,07,226, it said.

Of the total 13,254 deaths, Maharashtra accounted for the highest 5,984 fatalities, followed by Delhi with 2,112 deaths, Gujarat with 1,638, Tamil Nadu with 704, West Bengal with 540, Madhya Pradesh with 501, Uttar Pradesh with 507, Rajasthan with 337 and Telangana with 203 deaths.