INDIA RECORDS 18,000 COVID CASES IN A DAY

With the biggest single-day spike of 18,413 infections, India on Sunday crossed the grim milestone of four lakh cases, taking the overall count to 4,13,461. The death toll has risen to 13,317, with 369 new fatalities in the last 24 hours.

With 3,000-plus fresh coronavirus cases, Delhi has now surpassed Tamil Nadu and emerged as the second most infected state after Maharashtra.

The Union health ministry data released Sunday morning said the total number of cases in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu had gone up to 128,205 and 56,845 respectively.

The Delhi government said the infections in the national capital had increased to 59,746.

The fresh fatalities in three highly infected states Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu - are 91, 63 and 38 respectively. In all, there have been

5,984 deaths in Maharashtra,

2,175 in Delhi and 704 in Tamil Nadu.

The other states where fatalities are high are Gujarat

(1,638), West Bengal (540), Uttar Pradesh (507), Madhya Pradesh (501) and Rajasthan

(337).

What is alarming is that over

10,000 cases were reported for the 10th day in a row.

It took India 143 days to reach the four lakh mark. One lakh cases were reported till May 19 (it took 64 days to go from 100 cases to one lakh), another fortnight to go to two lakh earlier this month, and 10 days more to reach three lakh, on June 13.

From then, it has taken just eight days to reach four lakh on Sunday.

India is now the fourth worsthit nation after the United States, Brazil and Russia.

In good news, however, recoveries have also surged to

2,27,755 - a daily jump of 13,925, which is so far the highest recovery numbers India has seen in a day, taking the overall recovery rate to 55.48 per cent. There were 1,69,451 active cases, and now the number of recovered patients outnumber the number of active patients by 58,305. The number of samples tested every day are also going up.