Close to 39,000 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours taking India's total coronavirus cases to 10,77,618. With 543 deaths the toll stood at 26,816, Health Ministry data said.

Karnataka is the new hotspot state nearing 60,000 cases, as Maharashtra remained the worst-hit state, with 3,00,937 cases and 11,596 casualties. It crossed the three-lakh mark on Saturday with Mumbai reporting over 1 lakh coronavirus cases so far. It is followed by Tamil Nadu with total 1,65,714 cases, including 2,403 deaths.

The national capital, on the other hand, is projecting an uplifting trend. For 17 of the last 20 days, including 11 in a row now, the number of people recovering from Covid in Delhi has remained higher than newly detected infections -- no other state has come close to such a trend.

According to Health Ministry data, as many as 6,77,422 patients have recovered, almost twice the number of active patients at 3,73,379, though India continues to be the third worst-affected country after the US and Brazil.

In the last 24 hours, 3,58,127 samples were tested, as the testing lab network continued to expand.

States with more than 10,000 cases include Karnataka (59,652), Gujarat (47,390), Uttar Pradesh (47,036), Rajasthan (28,500), Madhya Pradesh (21,763), West Bengal (40,209), Haryana (25,547), Andhra Pradesh (44,609), Telangana (43,780), Assam (22,918), Jammu and Kashmir (13,198), Kerala (11,659), Odisha (16,701) and Bihar (25,136).

The AIIMS Ethics Committee has given its nod for a human clinical trial of the indigenously developed COVID-19 vaccine candidate Covaxin following which the premier hospital is likely to begin the exercise by enrolling healthy volunteers from Monday.