New Delhi, Dec 17 (IANS): With 24,010 fresh novel Coronavirus infections and 355 deaths in the past 24 hours, India's overall tally reached 99,56,557 on Thursday, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.

There has been 94,89,740 recoveries, and 1,44,451 deaths since the first case was reported in January end in India.

As the hunt for the vaccines gains momentum there were 33,291 recoveries in the last 24 hours. The active cases recorded are 3,22,366.

The recovery rate stands at 95.21 percent, and the fatality rate is 1.45.

A total of 15,78,05,240 samples have been tested for Covid-19 till now. Of these, 11,58,960 samples were tested on Wednesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit state with 18,80,893 cases till date. Over 70 per cent of the daily new cases were being reported by 10 states and union territory and in random order, they are Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh.

As many as eight Covid-19 vaccine candidates are under different stages of clinical trials which could be ready for authorisation in near future, including three indigenous vaccines.

It includes Astrazeneca and Oxford university developed and Serum Institute of India manufactured Covishield; Covaxin by Bharat Biotech Limited; ZyCoV-D by Zydus Cadila; the Russian vaccine candidate Sputnik-V; NVX-CoV2373 by SII; HGCO19 by Geneva, and two unlabelled vaccines -- Recombinant Protein Antigen based vaccine by Biological E Limited and Inactivated rabies vector platform by Bharat Biotech.