Giving a slight ray of hope, India's COVID-19 daily count dropped below 300,000 for the first time since Apr 21.

India -  a country of 1.36 billion people - recorded  281,000 fresh COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, as per Ministry of Health released data.

However, the daily death count due to the deadly virus stood at 4106 in the past 24 hours.

The death toll due to the disease now stands at 274,390.

A total of 20.8 million people have recuperated from COVID-19 so far. There are 3.6 million active cases in the country as of date, which comprises 14.66 per cent of the total caseload, the data indicated.

The top five states which have registered the maximum cases are Maharashtra with 34,389 cases, followed by Tamil Nadu with 33,181 cases, Karnataka with 31,531 cases, Kerala with 29,704 cases and Andhra Pradesh with 24,171 cases. 54.37 per cent of the new cases are reported from these five states, with Maharashtra alone responsible for 12.22 pc of the new cases. 4,106 deaths have been reported in India in the last 24 hours.

Maximum casualties reported in Maharashtra (974), followed by Karnataka with 403 daily deaths.

As per the government data, 691,211 people were vaccinated on Sunday, taking the total number of people vaccinated to 183 million.