Police officers stop a vehicle to check COVID-19 preventive measures in Kochi, India, on Aug. 3, 2020. India's health ministry announced on Monday that the country's COVID-19 cases have surpassed 1.8 million, reaching 1,803,695. (Str/Xinhua)

The total number of COVID-19 cases in India rose to 2,329,638 on Wednesday as the deaths crossed the 46,000 mark, reaching 46,091, said the data released by the federal health ministry.

Over the past 24 hours, as many as 60,963 new cases were recorded across the country, while 834 deaths due to the virus were registered.

There are a total of 643,948 active cases in India presently, and 1,639,599 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals.

Wednesday is the 13th consecutive day when over 50,000 COVID-19 cases have been recorded in India.

The recent surge in fresh cases is due to ramping of samples testing. Till Tuesday 26,015,297 samples were tested out of which 733,449 samples were tested on Tuesday alone.

According to the federal health ministry, the recovery rate amongst the COVID-19 patients has reached almost 70 percent, while the fatality rate presently stands at 2 percent and is steadily declining.

On Tuesday Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that there was an urgent need to increase testing of samples to curb COVID-19 in 10 states which account for nearly 80 percent of fresh cases across the country. These states are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Punjab, Bihar, Gujarat, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh.

Interacting with the chief ministers of all the 10 states through video-conferencing, Modi stated that if the virus was defeated in these states, the entire country would emerge victorious in the battle against COVID-19.