NEW DELHI: After seeing an upward trend for nearly 12 days, India finally saw a decline in the daily new Covid-19 cases.

As many as 40,715 more people tested positive for coronavirus in the last 24 hours, taking the cumulative tally to 1,16,86,796, said the Union health ministry on Tuesday.

The number of fresh infections is lesser than that recorded in the last two days, when it had reached 46,951. Over the past week, India has seen the sharpest surge in Covid-19 cases in the last 10 months.

While Maharashtra continues to be the biggest contributor to the daily count, the state also saw a slight drop in new cases on Tuesday, with 24,645 infections reported.

The central government said on Monday that Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh continue to report an upsurge in new cases and account for 80.5% of the fresh caseload.

In addition to this, the death toll in the country increased to 1,60,166 with 199 more people succumbing to the disease. The fatality count has also come down as compared to Monday when it was 212.

As many as 29,785 recuperated from Covid-19 during the same duration, taking the total number of recoveries to 1,11,81,253.