New Delhi: Despite a surge in India's COVID-19 cases to 425,282 on Monday marking a record 14,821 new cases in 24 hours, the government said the virus infection per lakh (100,000) people in India was among the lowest globally.

Citing the latest World Health Organisation (WHO) report to support its claim, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) said the WHO Situation Report 153 released on June 21 shows that "India has one of the lowest cases per lakh population inspite of its high population density".

India's cases per lakh population are 30.04 while the global average is more than its triple at 114.67, the Ministry said. The US has 671.24 cases per lakh population while the metric for Germany, Spain and Brazil is 583.88, 526.22 and 489.42 respectively, it said adding that this low figure is thus a testimony to the graded, preemptive and proactive approach the Indian government along with the states and Union Territories (UTs) took for the prevention, containment and management of novel coronavirus pandemic.

So far, a total of 2,37,195 patients have been cured of COVID-19. However, a total of 9,440 COVID-19 patients have been cured in the last 24 hours. The recovery rate is 55.77 percent amongst COVID-19 patients, it said. Presently, there are 1,74,387 active cases.

The ministry said the difference between the recovered patients and the active COVID-19 cases continues to widen and the number of recovered patients on Monday has crossed the number of active patients by 62,808. The COVID-19 testing infrastructure is continuously being ramped up, the ministry said, adding the number of testing labs have also been increased in this direction totalling to 985 - 723 government and 262 private.

Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs are 549 across the country that include 354 government and 195 private. The TrueNat-based testing labs are 359 in which 341 belong to the government and 18 are run by private entities. A total of 77 CBNAAT-based testing labs are functioning in the country, including 28 government and 49 private labs.

The total number of samples being tested per day is also steadily rising, as is the number of total samples tested, said the ministry, adding 1,43,267 samples were tested in the last 24 hours. Whereas the total number of samples tested thus far is 69,50,493 (IANS)