India has carried out nearly 900,000 coronavirus tests in a single day, a record for the country, as it fights a surge of Covid-19 cases. It comes as the South Korean cluster linked to church in northern Seoul grew to 400 cases.

India’s health ministry said a record 899,000 tests were conducted in the 24 hours to Tuesday. Only the US has ever carried out more daily tests, conducting 926,876, on 24 July.

India’s tests returned 55,079 cases positive cases, taking its total tally to more than 2.7 million – behind only the US and Brazil. The daily death toll of 876, took total fatalities in the country to 51,797.

The ministry said that even with such a high rate of testing, “the positivity has remained low”, currently 8.81% compared with the weekly national average of 8.84%. The US has a 9% test positivity rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

In South Korea, more than 400 coronavirus cases have been linked to a church in northern Seoul, the news agency Yonhap reported.

“After a member of Sarang Jeil church first tested positive on 12 August, 123 more were identified on Monday, raising the number of cases to 438, which includes 282 in Seoul,” Park Yu-mi, the city’s director of public health, said.

There are fears that this growing outbreak could escalate, with nearly 1,000 cases identified in the country in the past five days.

The Sarang Jeil cluster is now believed to be South Korea’s second biggest after the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in the city of Daegu was identified in February, where 5,214 were infected. It prompted the country’s first major lockdown of the pandemic.

Half of the Sarang Jeil’s 4,000 members have reportedly been tested so far, with 16% returning positive results.

In New Zealand, 13 new cases of coronavirus were identified on Tuesday, all but one connected to the cluster in the city of Auckland, taking the total to 69.

Authorities also announced that one man had tested positive to a US strain of the virus. The man, who was a maintenance worker at a quarantine hotel in Auckland, tested positive on 16 July and attended two church services before he was diagnosed. His contacts are being traced, authorities said.

Genome sequencing revealed his strain of the virus correlated to a returnee from the US who stayed at the hotel in quarantine and tested positive for Covid-19 on 31 July.

“The discovery of this second transmission into the community illustrates the challenge in keeping the virus at the border and reinforces the need for regular testing of workers at the border and MIQ [managed isolation and quarantine] facilities, whether they have symptoms or not.” said Professor Shaun Hendy, director of research organisation Te Pūnaha Matatini.

The new case came as Donald Trump called out what he described as a “big surge” of cases in New Zealand.

“The places they were using to hold up now they’re having a big surge … they were holding up names of countries and now they’re saying ‘whoops!’.

“Big surge in New Zealand, you know it’s terrible, we don’t want that, but this is an invisible enemy that should never have been let to come to Europe and the rest of the world by China,” he said.

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, responded by saying there was “no comparison” between the two countries’ virus experiences. The US has recorded 5.4 million cases and more than 170,000 deaths. New Zealand has had 22 deaths and has 90 active cases.

Lebanon’s health minister has warned that hospitals are reaching maximum capacity to treat coronavirus patients after the deadly Beirut blast either damaged or overwhelmed clinics and triggered a spike in Covid cases.

“Public and private hospitals in the capital in particular have a very limited capacity, whether in terms of beds in intensive care units or respirators,” the minister, Hamad Hassan, told a press conference.

The country reported a one-day record of 456 new infections on Monday, bringing its total to 9,337, including 105 deaths since the start of the outbreak in February.

Other global developments include:

• Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, said the city was “still in a very severe situation as far as the Covid-19 epidemic is concerned” as she unveiled a third round of pandemic stimulus funding.

• Malta will close its bars and nightclubs once again after a surge in coronavirus cases. On Monday, Italy closed nightclubs for three weeks due to a surge in cases.

• The Australian state of Victoria reported 222 new cases and 17 deaths, 13 of which were related to aged care.

• China reported 22 new cases on Tuesday, the same as a day earlier, the health authority said. All were imported cases, making it the second straight day for zero new locally transmitted cases. There were no new deaths.

• Russia’s world-famous Mariinsky ballet company has called off performances after 30 members, mostly dancers, contracted the coronavirus, St Petersburg health authorities said on Monday.