Health workers at a hospital prepare to cart away a dead body for cremation.

India on Wednesday recorded 3,998 deaths due to coronavirus in just 24 hours after its richest state reconciled its death count with 3,509 previously unreported fatalities, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data said.

Maharashtra, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, has reported 130,753 of the country's 418,480 coronavirus deaths, and added 3,509 earlier deaths to its tally, the federal health ministry said on Wednesday.

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The ministry did not give a reason but authorities have in the past attributed other instances of deaths going unreported to administrative errors, before the mistakes are discovered and the numbers appear in official data.

According to the Ministry there were also 42,015 new cases — 11,922 more than what was reported on Tuesday.

Healthcare workers prepare a body for burial.

Last month, the poor northern state of Bihar raised its death toll by more than 5,000 in a day when it included some unrecorded data.

A total of 415,472,455 COVID vaccine doses were administered in India, including 3,425,446 in the last 24 hours.

Active cases in the richest state of Maharashtra and the coastal state of Kerala had fallen in the last two weeks.

The sudden appearance of previously unrecorded deaths has lent weight to suspicion that India's overall death tally is significantly more than the official figure.

India's tally of infections stands at 31.22 million, with a death toll of 418,480, according to official data.

But the Washington-based Center for Global Development estimated said in a report on Tuesday that India's real death toll from COVID-19 could be as high as 4.9 million.

On Tuesday, India had recorded lowest fatalities in almost four months after it logged 374 deaths in the last 24 hours.

A healthcare volunteer checks the temperature of a woman in a village.

The country has 407,170 active cases presently and has witnessed a total of 418,480 deaths so far.

According to the Union Health Ministry, a total of 36,977 people were discharged in the last 24 hours, taking the total discharge to 30,390,687 till date from hospitals and health centres as the virus continued to infect less than one lakh people over the last 43 days.

The total number of samples tested so far has reached 449,193,273 on July 20 including 1,852,140 samples tested on Tuesday.