India today saw a record single-day jump of 40425 fresh COVID-19 cases pushing its tally to 1118043 while the death toll due to the infection rose to 27497, according to the health ministry data. 681 fatalities were reported in 24 hours.

Despite surging fresh coronavirus cases, India's COVID-19 case fatality rate is progressively falling and is currently at 2.49%, which is one of the lowest in the world, the Union Health Ministry said on Sunday.

700086 people having recovered Covid so far in India while the number of active cases stand at 390459. In 24 hours, 22664 patients were declared cured. The number of recovered COVID-19 patients exceeds active cases in India by 309627.

"The Rapid Antigen Point of Care (POC) Test coupled with the facilitation of widespread gold-standard RT-PCR based testing by States/UTs has resulted in a surge in the number of samples tested," the government said.

So far in India, 1.40 crore samples have been tested for coronavirus, according to medical research body ICMR. On Sunday, over 2.5 lakh samples were tested.

Bharat Biotech last week started human clinical trials of its coronavirus vaccine candidate Covaxin.

Pharma major Zydus Cadila had also last week started clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate with the first human dosing.