New Delhi, Oct 18 (IANS): With a spike of 61,871 cases and 1,033 fresh deaths in last 24 hours, India's tally reached 74,94,551, the Union Health Ministry data said on Sunday.

The daily spike is lower than Saturday's 62,211 coronavirus cases. According to the Ministry the recovery rate stands at 88.03 per cent while the fatality rate is 1.52 per cent.

India's daily spike has now dropped below that of the US while its daily toll which stopped breaching the 1,000-mark since October 4, is again on the rise.

Out of the total 74,94,552 cases, the active cases dipped by 11,776 since Saturday taking the total number of active cases to 7,83,311. One the other hand, with over 72,614 new recoveries, the total cured/discharged patients have reached to 65,97,210. While 1,14,031 have lost the battle against the pandemic.

Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit with a total of 15,86,321 cases, including 41,965 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 9,70,173 sample tests in a single day on Saturday, taking the total number of samples tested so far to 9,42,24,190.