Six states account for over 70% of new coronavirus infections in India

New Delhi, June 02: Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal continue to report a high number of daily COVID-19 cases, the Union Health Ministry said on Wednesday. The top six contributors account for 72.2% of the cumulative deaths recorded in India.

Maharashtra, which remains the worst-affected state in the country in months now, has seen the highest deaths in the country in total. A total of 335,102 deaths have been reported so far in the country.

Out of these 96,198 come from Maharashtra, 29,554 from Karnataka, 24,722 from Tamil Nadu, 24,299 from Delhi, 20,672 from Uttar Pradesh, 15,678 from West Bengal, 14,649 from Punjab and 13,077 from Chhattisgarh.

India reported 1,32,788 new coronavirus infections taking the country''s tally of COVID-19 cases to 2,83,07,832, while the daily positivity rate has further dropped to 6.57 per cent.

The COVID-19 death toll climbed to 3,35,102 with 3,207 fresh deaths.

The active cases were recorded below 20 lakh for the second consecutive day, the data updated at 8 am showed.

Also, 20,19,773 tests were conducted on Tuesday taking the total cumulative tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 35,00,57,330, while the daily positivity was recorded at 6.57 per cent. It has been less than 10 per cent for nine consecutive days, the ministry said.

The weekly positivity rate has declined to 8.21 per cent.

The active cases have reduced to 17,93,645 comprising 6.34 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has improved to 92.48 per cent.

A net decline of 1,01,875 cases has been recorded in the COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

Recoveries continue to outnumber daily new cases for 20th consecutive days. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 2,61,79,085, while the case fatality rate stands at 1.18 per cent.