India recorded 48,513 fresh coronavirus infections and 768 deaths linked to the highly contagious illness in the last 24 hours, which takes the country's tally to 15,31,669 cases, the Union Health Ministry said this morning. A total of 9,88,029 patients in the country have recovered so far and 34,193 have died since the beginning of the pandemic, government data shows. Today's spike in cases comes a day after India crossed 15 lakh cases.

Meanwhile, a medical survey of nearly 7,000 people in Mumbai has found that one in six or about 16 per cent of residents in the city had contracted the coronavirus. In slum areas, where lakhs of people live in cramped spaces usually sharing toilets, the number was a whopping 57 per cent. Mumbai recorded 717 new cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, its lowest one-day rise in more than two months, taking the tally to 1,10,846, while 55 more patients died taking the total to 6,184, authorities said.

The United States on Tuesday registered 1,592 new coronavirus deaths in 24 hours, the highest number of daily fatalities in 2.5 months, Johns Hopkins University reported in its real-time tally. The country also recorded more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases in one day, news agency AFP reported. 

India is the third worst-hit country by the virus after the US and Brazil.