Bengaluru, Jul 18 (IANS): Karnataka on Saturday registered 4,537 new COVID-19 cases, taking the number of infections in the state to 59,652, a health official said.

The state's death toll has reached 1,240 with 93 fresh fatalities.

Continuing the daily trend, Bengaluru has emerged with the highest number of infections, 2,125, raising the city tally to 29,621, out of which 22,449 are active.

As the ground zero of coronavirus in the southern state, the city accounts for 61 per cent of all the active cases.

Among the new cases, excluding Bengaluru, Dakshina Kannada accounts for 509 infections, followed by Dharwad (186), Vijayapura (176), Ballari (155), Belagavi (137), Uttara Kannada (116), Shivamogga (114) and Udupi (109) among others.

Like everyday, most of the deaths suffered from Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) and had fever, cough and breathlessness as symptoms.

A few fatalities also suffered from Influenza Like Illness (ILI).

In a positive development, 1,018 patients have been discharged, raising the total discharges to 21,775.

In contrast, patients in the ICU rose to 580 in number.

Of the total 59,652 cases, 36,631 are active.

Commenting on the number of tests, Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar said the state is conducting 379 tests for every one million population in a day.

"Having conducted 9.5 lakh tests so far, we are clocking 379 tests per million population per day, which is 2.5 times more than 140 tests per million per day, recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).