The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 718 and the number of cases to 23,077 in India on Friday, according to the federal health ministry.
The number of active COVID-19 cases is 17,610 as 4,748 people were cured and discharged, and one patient migrated, it said.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said a total 23,502 samples have been confirmed positive for coronavirus so far.
The Health Ministry said 77 foreign nationals are among the total 23,077 COVID-19 cases reported in the country.
A total of 32 deaths were reported since Thursday evening, of which 14 fatalities were reported from Maharashtra, nine from Gujarat, three from Uttar Pradesh and two each from Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the ministry said.
Of the 718 deaths, Maharashtra tops the tally with 283 fatalities, followed by Gujarat at 112, Madhya Pradesh at 83, Delhi at 50, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh at 27 each.
The death toll reached 24 each in Uttar Pradesh and Telengana, 20 in Tamil Nadu and 17 in Karantaka.
Punjab has registered 16 deaths, while West Bengal has reported 15 fatalities. The disease has claimed five lives in Jammu and Kashmir, while Kerala, Jharkhand and Haryana have recorded three COVID-19 deaths each.
Bihar has reported two deaths, while Meghalaya, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and Assam have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry’s updated data.
However, a PTI tally of the figures reported by various states as on Thursday showed 722 deaths in the country.
There has been a lag in the federal data, compared to the number of deaths announced by different states, which officials attribute to procedural delays in assigning the cases to individual states.
Seven states have more than 1000 cases, with Maharashtra reporting the highest number of confirmed cases at 6,430, followed by Gujarat at 2,624, Delhi at 2,376, Rajasthan at 1,964, Madhya Pradesh at 1,699, Tamil Nadu at 1,683, and Uttar Pradesh at 1,510.
