New Delhi:

India's COVID-19 tally of cases went past 69 lakh with 70,496 infections being reported in a day, while active cases of infection fell below 9 lakh after a month comprising 12.94 per cent of the total caseload, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.

Deaths from COVID-19 infections rose by 964 to 106,490, the ministry said.

India’s death toll from the novel coronavirus rose past 100,000 on Saturday, only the third country in the world to reach that bleak milestone, after the United States and Brazil, and its epidemic shows no sign of abating.The total coronavirus cases mounted to 69,06,151.The death toll climbed to 1,06,490 with 964 people succumbing to the disease in a span of 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am showed.

The total recoveries have surged to 59,06,069 pushing the recovery rate to 85.52 per cent, while there are 8,93,592 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country.

The COVID-19 case fatality rate due to the coronavirus infection was recorded at 1.54 per cent.

India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23 and 40 lakh on September 5. It went past 50 lakh on September 16 and crossed 60 lakh on September 28.

According to the ICMR, a cumulative total of 8,46,34,680 samples have been tested up to October 8 with 11,68,705 samples being tested on Thursday.