India broke Brazil’s record of daily Covid cases as the figure reached 52,972 on Monday, according to World Health Organization (WHO) data, as the country’s overall tally crossed the 18-lakh mark, just a day after it went past 17 lakh.

The United States led the daily case figure with 58,888 cases, while Brazil recorded 45,392 cases on Monday.

The number of Covid-19 tests carried out in India has also crossed the 2 crore-mark, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

This is the fifth consecutive day that Covid cases have increased by more than 50,000 in the country.

The total coronavirus cases surged to 18,03,695, while the death toll due to Covid-19 climbed to 38,135 with 771 people succumbing to the disease in a day, Union health ministry data updated at 8 am showed.

Union home minister Amit Shah, Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa and Tamil Nadu governor Banwarilal Purohit tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday, the latest among prominent public figures in the country to have contracted the disease.

Uttar Pradesh minister Kamal Rani Verma succumbed to the infection on Sunday, being the first minister in the state to succumb to the disease.

There are 5,79,357 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country at present while the recoveries have increased to 11,86,203.

As many as 40,574 people have recovered from Covid in a day, and the recovery rate stands at 65.77 per cent, while the fatality rate is at 2.11 per cent, the data stated.

On Monday, it was reported that India’s department of biotechnology in a bid to find a speedy cure, has selected 10 cities where several thousand healthy volunteers could join the anticipated large-scale clinical trials to assess the efficacy of candidate vaccines against Covid-19.

A department of biotechnology (DBT) expert panel has identified Hyderabad, Palwal (Haryana), Pune, Tirunelveli (Tamil Nadu) and Vellore as the first set of “field sites” for large-scale — also called Phase 3 — clinical trials and long-term epidemiological studies of the coronavirus infection.