The country added over 90,000 new Covid-19 cases in a day for the first time, the highest anywhere, as its case count mounted to over 41 lakh and it outstripped Brazil to become the country with the second highest number of cases, behind only the USA.

Union health ministry data uploaded at 8 a.m. on Sunday showed that India had recorded 90,632 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the preceding 24-hour period, taking its total tally to 41,13,811, while the death toll climbed to 70,626 with the novel coronavirus virus claiming 1,065 lives during the same period.

However, according to reference website Worldometer. info, India’s total tally as of Sunday evening stood at 41,60,493 cases, compared to 41,23,000 cases for Brazil, and 64,34,526 cases for the USA. A PTI tally based on the figures reported by various states, put India’s total Covid-19 caseload at 41,93,237, as of Sunday evening, with the number of Covid-19 linked deaths coming to 71,586.

The good news, according to the Union health Ministry is that the recovery rate is also the highest in the world with as many as 73,642 patients having recuperated in 24 hours. The total of recovered patients has surged to nearly 32 lakh, pushing the recovery rate to 77.32 per cent.

The case fatality rate, which is one of the lowest in the world has further dropped to 1.72 per cent, said a senior officer of the Health Ministry.

According to the Health Ministry, there are 8,62,320 active cases of Covid-19 infection in the country accounting for only 20.96 per cent of the total caseload. “The spike in the daily recovered Covid-19 patients continues in the country. For the second successive day, India has clocked a record recovery of more than 70,000 patients in a single day,” the Ministry said.

A total of 73,642 patients have recovered and been discharged from either home or facility isolation or hospitals in a day, according to the Health Ministry data.

“With this surge in numbers of patients getting recovered on a daily basis, India’s recovery rate has been further pushed upwards to 77.32 per cent,” the ministry said.

Sustained efforts by the Centre, state and Union Territory governments have substantially resulted in a higher number of people getting identified at an early stage for the infection through very high levels of testing, the Ministry said.