India reported 61,408 new cases of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and 836 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the tally to 3,106,349, including 2,338,036 recovered patients, according to the Union health ministry on Monday.

The country had crossed the 1 million mark on July 16, the 1.5 million milestone on July 28 and two million on August 6. The number of Covid-19 cases in India crossed three million on August 22. Last week, 397,277 Covid-19 cases, including more than 5,700 deaths, were added to the country’s infection tally.

There were 710,771 active Covid-19 cases, the health ministry’s dashboard showed at 8am. With 57,469 patients discharged between Sunday and Monday morning, the number of recoveries has reached 2,338,036 and recovery rate at 75.26%, data showed.

The health ministry said the gap between recoveries and active cases continued to widen, with the number of patients recovering currently more than three times the active cases. The widening gap has led to active Covid-19 cases becoming about 23.24% of the total positive case reported in the country so far. India had reported its first Covid-19 case on January 30.

“This is because of effective implementation of Centre led policies ensuring efficient clinical management in hospital settings for critical patients, and supervised Home Isolation for moderate and mild ones,” the health ministry tweeted on Monday morning.

“The constantly increasing recoveries have ensured that the actual caseload of the country viz. the active cases, has reduced and currently comprises only 23.24% of the total positive cases. This has also resulted in a gradually falling mortality rate.”

According to the health ministry’s data, India has witnessed 57,542 people succumbing to the viral disease to date. It has said that India’s Case Fatality Rate (CFR) at 1.86% is one of the lowest globally. The ministry has been attributing this to the comprehensive and sustained effectiveness of the Centre’s policy of “TESTING aggressively, TRACKING comprehensively & TREATING efficiently”.

“Higher number of recoveries and declining mortality rate among COVID patients have shown that India’s graded and pro-active strategies are delivering results on the field,” it has said.

According to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracker, the global tally stands at 23,358,598 with 807,830 fatalities. The US leads the tally with 5,701,938 Covid-19 cases, followed by Brazil with 3,605,783. India is the third worst-affected country in the world.