India witnessed highest spike of almost 17,000 fresh Covid cases, with Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu contributing more than 62 per cent of it in the past 24 hours taking the total in the country to 4.73 lakh, data from the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry revealed on Thursday.

A total of 16,922 new cases egged the tally to 4,73,105 so far as India continued to be the fourth worst hit country by the pandemic. According to the Health Ministry data, in the last 24 hours 418 new deaths were reported taking the total tally of fatalities to 14,894 in the country.

Over 1,000 cases more were recorded in 24 hours than what we saw on Wednesday, when 15,968 new COVID-19 cases were reported.

Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu continued at the top contributing almost 62 per cent of the total spike of the Covid-19 cases.

There are currently 1,86,514 active and 2,71,696 recoveries. The number of patients recovering from COVID-19 continues to rise. The recovery rate has further improved to almost 57.42 per cent.

Maharashtra remained the worst-hit state in the country with total cases at 1,42,900, including 6,739 deaths. It recorded a spike of 3,890 fresh cases with 208 deaths in last 24 hours.

Delhi has 70,390 cases and 2,365 deaths followed by Tamil Nadu with 67,468 cases with 866 deaths. Delhi witnessed the surge of 3,788 cases with 64 deaths and Tamil Nadu recorded 2,865 cases with 33 fatalities in last 24 hours.

States with more than 10,000 cases include Gujarat with 28,943 cases and 1,735 deaths, Uttar Pradesh (19,557), Rajasthan (16,009), Madhya Pradesh (12,448), West Bengal (15,173), Haryana (12,010), Karnataka, (10,118), Andhra Pradesh (10,331) and Telangana (10,444) cases.

India conducted 2,07,871 Covid-19 tests on people in the last 24 hours. The number of government labs has been increased to 726 and private labs have increased to 266, summing up to a total of 992.

The overall number of global COVID-19 cases has topped 9.4 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 482,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.