The coronavirus cases in India continue to spread rapidly as the country has marked significant and consecutive highest jumps in the COVID-19 tally over a major part of the past two weeks. With nearly 10,000 new cases reported in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 count on Monday hit a new high, crossing the 2.56 lakh-mark, while the death toll has crossed the 7,100-mark as well.

At 9:30 AM on this day, the COVID-19 tally in the country has reached 2,56,611 cases, which includes 1,25,381 active cases; 1,24,095 cured, discharged, or migrated patients, and 7,135 deaths.

According to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, as many as 9,983 new COVID-19 cases and 206 deaths were reported in the country in the last 24 hours, marking a significant spike. In fact, this is the highest spike in the tally till now.

Notably, the country has witnessed significant and consecutive highest jumps in the country's COVID-19 tally for the major part of these past few weeks.

Maharashtra continues to be the epicenter of the coronavirus spread where the number of cases has witnessed an even large spike recently. According to the Health Ministry, Maharashtra has the highest number of cases with 85,975 positive cases of COVID-19 infection and 3,060 deaths. As many as 3,000 COVID-19 cases were reported from the state in the past 24 hours.

Notably, Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, has become the hotbed of the coronavirus spread in the state where the number of cases has crossed the 48,000-mark and the death toll has topped the 1,600-mark as well. At 9:30 AM on this day, the COVID-19 tally in Mumbai showed 48,774 cases and 1,638 deaths.

One of the real challenges in Mumbai is controlling the disease contamination in Asia's biggest slum -- Dharavi, which is an extremely densely-populated region.

Maharashtra is followed by Tamil Nadu with 31,667 cases, which overtook Delhi due to a recent massive spike in the number of cases. The national capital is third on the list with 28,936 cases.

After Delhi comes Gujarat, where the COVID-19 figure stands at 20,097 with 13,643 patients recovered and 1,249 fatalities. Rajasthan has reported 10,599 cases of which 7,754 have recovered and 240 patients are dead.

Uttar Pradesh has reported 10,536 positive cases so far of which 6,185 patients have recovered and 275 patients have lost their lives due to the virus. In Madhya Pradesh, as many as 9,401 people have confirmed COVID-19, of which 6,331 recovered and 412 people succumbed to it.

In Kerala, which reported the country's first COVID-19 case, 1915 people have been detected positive for coronavirus so far.

According to the daily testing (molecular-based) update provided by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a total of 47,74,434 samples have been tested until now, of which 1,08,048 samples were tested in the last 24 hours.

Shopping malls, religious places, hotels, and restaurants are now set to reopen in most states from today after more than two months of sustained lockdown. The current phase of re-opening, called 'Unlock 1', takes an economic focus. The government intends on being smart about implementing the lockdown in select places so that the economic activity of the country, as a whole, does not take any more hits.

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had also released the standard operating procedure (SOPs) for malls, restaurants, and hotels as they plan to open these establishments under relaxed guidelines from today. But a lot of details were also left to the discretion of the states to finetune.