Coronavirus: With more than 68,000 COVID-19 cases, India surge past 2.9 million

New Delhi, Aug 21: Union Health Ministry on Friday said that India recorded 68,898 cases of the coronavirus and 983 deaths in a single day, taking the country's tally past 2.9 million.

According to the data, this is the third day in a row that the daily COVID-19 cases in the country have been more than 64,000--it was 64,531 on Wednesday and a record 69,652 on Thursday. The number of active cases stands at 6,92,028 across the country and the death toll at 54,899.

With 62,282 recoveries in the last 24 hours, the recovery rate amongst the COVID patients has reached 74.29 per cent. India now has 21,58,946 coronavirus disease patients who have recovered. The gap between active and recovered has gone up further at 14,66,918.

"Early identification through TESTING, surveillance and contact TRACING along with focus on timely and appropriate clinical TREATMENT of COVID-19 patients have ensured that not only is the Case Fatality Rate is lower than the global average and progressively declining (current figure is 1.89%), but also a small proportion of the active cases are on ventilator support," the health ministry said on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh performed the maximum number of tests at 1,09,516 on Thursday. The close second was Bihar with 1,07,945 tests, followed by Maharashtra that performed 76,591 tests. Meghalaya had zero tests performed on Thursday, followed by Andaman and Nicobar Islands with 366, and Sikkim with 387 tests in a day.