New Delhi, Oct 17 (IANS): With a spike of 62,211 new Covid-19 cases and 837 deaths in 24 hours, India's tally reached 74,32,680, the Union Health Ministry data said on Saturday.

The spike is lower than the Friday figures of 63,371 coronavirus new cases and 895 deaths recorded in 24 hours.

India's doubling time has also sharply increased to 70.4 days. This indicates a substantial fall in the daily new cases and the consequent increase in time taken to double the total cases.

On Saturday, the Health Ministry data said 65,24,595 have been discharged, 7,95,087 are currently active while 1,12,998 lost the battle against the pandemic.

The recovery rate stands at 87.78 percent, the fatality rate is 1.52 percent, the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.

Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit with a total of 15,76,062 cases, including 41,502 deaths; followed by Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

According to the data from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India conducted 9,99,090 sample tests in a single day on Friday, taking the total number of samples tested so far to 9,32,54,017.