India's COVID-19 tally nears 13 lakh after single-day spike of almost 50,000 cases

New Delhi: India saw a record single-day spike of 49,310 COVID-19 cases, taking the country’s virus tally to 12,87,945 on Friday, July 24 while the recoveries surged to 8,17,208, according to the Union Health Ministry data.

The death toll mounted to 30,601 with 740 new fatalities reported in a span of 24 hours, the data updated at 8am on Friday showed. With COVID-19 fatalities crossing 30,000, India now stands sixth among nations with highest number of deaths from the virus. Only Italy, Mexico, UK, Brazil and the US have recorded more COVID-19 fatalities.

There are 4,40,135 active cases of coronavirus infection presently in the country.

Thus, around 63.45 per cent people have recovered so far. The total number of confirmed cases includes foreigners.

Of the 740 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, 298 are from Maharashtra, 97 from Karnataka, 88 are from Tamil Nadu, 61 from Andhra Pradesh, 34 from West Bengal, 28 from Gujarat, 26 each from Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, 11 from Rajasthan,10 from Madhya Pradesh and nine each from Jammu and Kashmir and Telangana.

Punjab has reported eight fatalities followed by Assam, Odisha and Haryana with six deaths each, Kerala five, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Puducherry three each, while Chhattisgarh, Tripura and Goa have registered a fatality each.