18,522 new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours, 5,66,840 total cases in India

India recorded a spike of 18,522 cases in the last 24 hours, pushing the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 5,66,840, with the number of fatalities inching closer to 17,000-mark, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Tuesday.

Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu constitute more than 60 per cent of the total Covid-19 cases in the country.

Maharashtra has 1,69,883 cases, followed by Tamil Nadu (86,224) and Delhi (85,161) cases totalling 3,41,268 cases out of 5,66,840.

A total of 3,34,822 people have recovered and discharged from hospitals. The recovery rate is 59.06 per cent among the COVID-19 patients.

According to the Health Ministry data, 418 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours, taking the COVID-19 death toll to 16,893.

With a spike of 5,257 cases, Maharashtra remained the worst hit state in the country. The state has a total of 1,69,883 cases, including 7,610 deaths.

Tamil Nadu is at the second spot with 86,224 confirmed cases, of which, 1,141 people have died, 47,749 have recovered and 37,334 are active.

Delhi with a total of 85,161 cases, including 2,680 deaths and 56,235 recoveries.

States with more than 10,000 cases include Gujarat with 31,938 cases and 1,827 deaths, Uttar Pradesh (22,828), Rajasthan (17,660), Madhya Pradesh (13,370), West Bengal (17,907), Haryana (14,210), Karnataka (14,295), Andhra Pradesh (13,891) and Telangana (15,394) cases.

India now has 1,036 diagnostic labs dedicated to COVID-19. This includes 749 in the government sector and 287 private labs. More than 1,50,000 samples are being tested everyday. The number of samples tested in the last 24 hours has increased to 2,10,292.

Meanwhile, the global death toll due to COVID-19 crossed 5-lakh mark, as the total number of cases crossed the 10-million mark, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

Currently, the total number of cases increased to 10,199,798, while the fatalities increased to 502,947, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its latest update.