India on Thursday morning recorded 1,72,433 new coronavirus cases, taking the infection tally to 4,18,03,318 since the pandemic broke out in January 2020. The number of cases is 6.84% higher than Wednesday’s tally of 1,61,386 infections.

With 1,008 deaths, the toll climbed to 4,98,983 on Thursday. The toll includes 335 backlog deaths that Kerala added to its tally of fatalities on Wednesday, data from the Union health ministry showed.

The daily positivity rate climbed to 10.99% from Wednesday’s 9.26%. There are 15,33,921 active case and 3,97,70,414 patients have so far recovered from the infection.

(Source: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare)

Kerala reported the highest number of daily fatalities at 165, excluding the backlog deaths, followed by Karnataka at 81 and Maharashtra 79. Kerala also recorded the highest daily infection count among all states at 52,199, followed by Karnataka at 20,505 and Maharashtra at 18,067, reported The Hindu.

Globally, the coronavirus disease has infected over 38.45 crore people and caused 56.99 lakh deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University.