A health worker collects a sample for COVID-19 testing from a police officer in New Delhi, India on Aug. 2, 2020.  (Photo by Partha Sarkar/Xinhua)

India's health ministry on Wednesday announced that the country has surpassed 1.9 million COVID-19 cases, reaching 1,908,254.

According to the ministry's data, as many as 52,509 new COVID-19 cases were detected in the past 24 hours. Besides, 857 deaths took place since Tuesday, taking the total death toll to 39,795 on Wednesday.

The recovery rate on the country is consistently increasing even as a total 1,282,215 people who were infected with the virus have successfully recovered and discharged from various hospitals across the country. Still there are a total of 586,244 active cases in the country.

As per the federal health ministry, the recovery rate of COVID-19 patients as on Tuesday had increased to 66.30 percent.

Over the past couple of weeks the country has been focusing on ramping up the samples testing. Till Tuesday 21,484,402 samples were tested, out of which 619,652 samples were tested on Tuesday alone.