India registered a total of 77,266 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours, making it the highest single-day spike in the country ever and also the highest number of new cases of the virus recorded anywhere in the world.

The country has now surpassed 3.38 million total cases of COVID-19 and saw 1057 deaths in the last 24 hours and 61,529 deaths till date. According to the health ministry's dashboard this morning, there are 7,42,023 active cases. With 60,177 people discharged between Thursday and Friday morning, the number of recovered patients have surged to 25,83,948 and the recovery rate to 76.27%. "In the past 5 months, more than 3/4 of cases have recovered and less than 1/4 are active now. Effective implementation of the Centre's strategic and graded TEST-TRACK-TREAT approach has led to higher recoveries and lower fatality," the health ministry reportedly said on Friday. Maharashtra continues to remain the worst affected state as a result of the pandemic, followed by Tamil Nadu. Of the total 61,529 deaths, Maharashtra has reported the 23,444 fatalities, followed by 6,948 in Tamil Nadu, 5,232 in Karnataka, 4,369 in Delhi, 3,633 in Andhra Pradesh, 3,217 in Uttar Pradesh, 3,017 in West Bengal, 2,962 in Gujarat,and 1,306 in Madhya Pradesh.

In the last 24 hours, Maharashtra registered 14,857 fcases of coronavirus infection, taking the total cases in the state to 7,33,568. While Tamil Nadu reported 5,981 fresh COVID-19 cases taking its total to 4,03,024, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana reported 10,621 and 2,932 fresh cases, respectively. The total number of cases in Andhra Pradesh right now is 3,93,090 while Telangana's numbers went up to to 1,17,415. India is currently the third worst affected country in the world following the USA and Brazil.

COVID-19 has claimed the lives of more than 8,36,110 people and infected over 2,46,54,885 people across the world. The virus was first identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. As the death toll and overall cases began rising rapidly across the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency and the outbreak has now been labelled a pandemic.