India's COVID-19 tally on Wednesday crossed 72 lakh-mark after a fresh spike of 71,75,881 cases was recorded in the past 24 hours, Union Health Ministry said in its daily update.

Country's overall COVID case count now stands at 72,39,390. Meanwhile, 74,632 coronavirus patients were cured/discharged during the same time-frame, pushing the total number of recoveries to 63,01,927.

With 730 deaths in one day, the death toll has spiked to 1,10,586 so far. Active case-load on the country has further decreased by 11,853 since Tuesday and India is currently home to 8,26,876 active cases of the novel coronavirus.

In terms of percentage, the active cases are 11.42 per cent. Recovery rate stands at 87.05 per cent, while the death rate is at 1.53 per cent. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), as many as 11,45,015 samples were tested in the past 24 hours, taking the total cumulative samples tested since the beginning of the pandemic till Tuesday to 9,00,90,122.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra continues to remain the worst affected state with maximum case count as well as in terms of maximum active cases. Globally, the United States continues to remain the most-infected, followed by India and Brazil.