India overtakes Russia in Covid-19 cases to become third worst-hit nation

India went past Russia on Sunday to become the third worst-hit nation by the Covid-19 pandemic with the country's tally of infections crossing 690,000 , according to Worldometer.

Only the US and Brazil are ahead of India in terms of total coronavirus infections.

Russia has 681,251 infections while Brazil has 1,578,376 and the US has 2,954,999 cases, according to Worldometer which compiles the Covid-19 data from around the globe.

According to a PTI tally, India's Covid-19 case load soared to 690,349 while the death toll climbed to 19,683.

However, the Johns Hopkins University in the United States, which has also been compiling Covid-19 data from all over the world, put Russia's infection tally at 680,283 and India's 673,165, which is the official figure updated at 8 am.

The health ministry data updated at 8 am showed a record single-day surge of 24,850 coronavirus infections and 613 fatalities pushing India's total number of cases to 673,165 and the death toll to 19,268 on Sunday.

The country has registered over 20,000 Covid-19 cases for the third day in a row.

With a steady rise, the number of recoveries stands at 4,09,082 in the country while one patient has migrated. There are 244,814 active coronavirus cases in the country, the data at 8 am showed.

The number of recovered cases exceeded that of the active cases by 1,64,268 as of Sunday, the health ministry said.

"Thus, 60.77 per cent of the patients have recovered so far," it said.