India on Monday registered the highest single-day spike of almost 50,000 (49,931) fresh novel coronavirus cases taking the total tally to over 14.35 lakh cases while with 708 new deaths, total fatalities crossed 32,771, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.

According to the latest data, the total number of cases in India reached 14,35,453 of which 32,771 people have died while 9,17,568 people have recovered. The total number of active cases are 4,85,114. The recovery rate further improved to 63.92 per cent.

Being the third-worst hit country, India is now adding a lakh cases in less than three days. Last Monday, the country had crossed the 11 lakh-mark and within seven days it added three lakh more fresh cases. Maharashtra remained the worst hit state after recording a single-day spike of 9,431 cases taking the state's tally to 3,75,799 of which 13,656 people have died of the deadly disease.

Maharashtra is followed by Tamil Nadu (2,13,723), Delhi (1,30,606), Karnataka (96,141) and Andhra Pradesh (96,298).The national capital recorded a single-day spike of 1,075 cases taking the tally beyond 1.3 lakh cases of which 11,904 were active cases as 3,827 people died and 1,14,875 were cured and discharged.

States and Union Territories which recorded less than 1,000 cases were Andaman and Nicobar Islands (324), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (914), Chandigarh (887), Mizoram (361), Meghalaya (702) and Sikkim (545).

 As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India crossed 13.8 lakh on Sunday, over 36,000 patients were cured in the last 24 hours, a record so far. As per the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), the highest ever recoveries in a single day was reported in the last 24 hours with 36,145 COVID-19 patients cured and discharged.

This has taken the total number of recoveries to 8,85,576, achieving another high of fast approaching 64 per cent recovery rate. "The recovery rate stands at 63.92 per cent on Sunday. This means more patients are recovering thus maintaining the steadily widening difference between recovered and active COVID-19 patients. This gap has crossed 4 lakh and currently stands at 4,17,694. Recovered cases are 1.89 times the active cases (4,67,882)," the Ministry said.