New Delhi: Death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 1,008 and the number of cases climbed to 31,787 in the country on Wednesday, registering a record jump of 71 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Health Ministry.
There has been a spike of 1,813 cases since Tuesday evening.
The number of active COVID-19 cases stand at 22,982, while 7,796 people have recovered, and one patient has migrated, the ministry said.
"Thus, around 24.52 per cent of the patients have recovered so far," a Health Ministry official said.
The total number of cases include 111 foreign nationals.
A total of 71 deaths were reported since Tuesday evening of which 31 fatalities were from Maharashtra, 19 from Gujarat, six from Madhya Pradesh, five each from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, two from West Bengal and one each from Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Tamil Nadu.
Of the 1,008 deaths, Maharashtra tops the tally with 400 fatalities, followed by Gujarat at 181, Madhya Pradesh at 119, Delhi at 54, Rajasthan at 51, Uttar Pradesh at 36 and Andhra Pradesh at 31.
Number of hotspots reduce
The number of COVID-19 hotspot districts in India as on Wednesday morning has come down to 129 from 170 a fortnight ago, but in the same period the number of infection-free districts or green zones too decreased from 325 to 307, according to official sources.
During this time, the number of non-hotspot districts, also known as orange zones, increased from 207 to 297, they said.
The Centre had on April 15 classified districts into three categories.
Those with high load of COVID-19 cases or which have a high growth rate of the disease are marked as hotspots or red zones, while those with considerably fewer cases of the respiratory infection fall in orange zone or non-hotspots. Districts with no COVID-19 cases are categorised as green zones.
However, a red zone or orange zone district can be demarcated as green zone if no new coronavirus case is reported from those places for 28 and 14 days respectively.
The government has already identified 15 districts in nine states, including Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat, as having "high case load". Of these, seven -- Hyderabad (Telangana), Pune (Maharashtra), Jaipur (Rajasthan), Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Mumbai (Maharashtra) and Delhi show particularly high case volumes.
Other high case load places that are "critical" in the battle against COVID-19 include -- Vadodara (Gujarat), Kurnool (Andhra Pradesh), Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Jodhpur (Rajasthan), Agra (Uttar Pradesh), Thane (Maharashtra), Chennai (Tamil Nadu) and Surat (Gujarat).
A senior health ministry said the doubling time of coronavirus cases in India was three to 3.25 days before the nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 25 and now it is 10.2 to 10.9 days.
