India's novel coronavirus tally crossed the 26-lakh (2.6 million) mark on Monday with 57,981 new cases in 24 hours, while the death toll climbed to 50,921 with 941 more fatalities, said the Health Ministry.

Out of the total 2,647,663 cases, recoveries have surged to 1,751,555 with a record 57,584 more people recuperating in the past 24 hours, taking the recovery rate to nearly 72.51 per cent. The actual caseload of the country is the active cases, which currently stand at 6,76,900.

The country had touched the two-million mark on August 7 and added more than six lakh cases in ten days. The silver lining, however, is that the gap between recoveries and active cases is growing every day. Currently, recoveries are over 12 lakh more than the active cases.

As far as the death toll is concerned, the country had registered its first death on March 13 and crossed the 25,000-mark on July 17. The next 25,000 deaths were logged in the span of a month.

Notably, the case fatality rate, which is the proportion of people who die from the disease among individuals diagnosed, has dropped to 1.93 per cent, the ministry said.

As many as 7,31,697 samples were tested on Sunday, taking the total to 3,00,41,400 samples being tested till date, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Maharashtra remained the worst-hit state with a total of 5,95,865 cases and 20,037 deaths; followed by Tamil Nadu with 3,38,055 cases and 5,766 deaths. The southern state is followed by Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh.

At the global front, the overall number of global coronavirus cases has topped 21.5 million, while the deaths were nearing 774,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.

As of Monday morning, the total number of cases stood at 21,598,893 and the fatalities rose to 773,934, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its latest update.

The US accounted for the world's highest number of infections and fatalities at 5,403,213 and 170,052, respectively, according to the CSSE. Brazil came in the second place with 3,340,197 infections and 107,852 deaths. (IANS)