A medical worker takes a swab sample from a man at a test centre in Srinagar, India, on Thursday. AFP

India announced on Thursday 134,154 new COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, while deaths from the coronavirus rose by 2,887, the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry said.

The country's total COVID-19 caseload now stands at 28.4 million, while total fatalities are at 337,989, according to data from the health ministry.

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India registers 132,788 new coronavirus infections

On June 1, India reported 127,510 cases lowest since April 8. On April 8, India had recorded 131,968 cases while on April 7, the country witnessed 126,789 fresh cases.

Most Metro cities are still fighting the second wave, though Mumbai and Delhi have arrested the surge.

India tries to build immunity to protect its nearly 1.4 billion people.

India's overall tally of COVID-19 cases now stands at 28,441,986 with 1,713,413 active cases and 337,989 deaths so far.

According to the Health Ministry, a total of 211,499 people have been discharged in the last 24 hours, taking the total discharge to 26,390,584 COVID cases till date.

The Health Ministry said that a total of 221,043,693 people have been vaccinated so far in the country, including 2,426,265 who were administered vaccines in the last 24 hours.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, 353,782,648 samples have been tested up to June 2 for COVID-19. Of these 2,159,873 samples were tested on Wednesday.

In the last three weeks, India has recorded over 80,000 deaths. On May 24, India crossed a grim milestone of three-lakh deaths due to the coronavirus infections, thus becoming world's third country after the US and Brazil to cross three-lakh deaths.

India registered record fatalities due to COVID on May 21 with 4,529 deaths — the highest from COVID infection in any country in a day since the coronavirus outbreak was reported in China's Wuhan in December 2019. It surpassed 4,468 deaths in the US on January 12, and earlier 4,211 in Brazil on April 6.

After battling a brutal second wave for weeks, fresh COVID cases came down below the three lakh-mark for the first time on May 17 after touching record high of 414,188 on May 7.