New Delhi, June 24 : India witnessed a spike of almost 16,000 fresh cases of the novel Coronavirus in the past 24 hours taking the total in the country to 4.5 lakh with 465 new deaths, data from the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry revealed on Wednesday. India recorded the highest single-day spike of 15,968 new cases, as the total reached 4,56,183 so far. A spike of over 1,000 cases from Tuesday, when 14,933 new COVID-19 cases were reported. According to the Health Ministry data, 14,476 people have died of Covid in the country. A total of 1,35,663 more people have recovered than the number of active cases. There are currently 1,83,022 active and 2,58,685 recoveries. The number of patients recovering from COVID-19 continues to rise. The recovery rate has further improved to almost 56.38 per cent amongst the COVID-19 patients. The number of government labs has been increased to 726 and private labs have increased to 266, summing up to a total of 992. India conducted 21,51,95 Covid-19 tests on people in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra remained the worst-hit state in the country with total cases at 1,39,010, including 6,531 deaths. Delhi took over Tamil Nadu to become the state with the second highest cases. The national capital has 66,602 cases and 2,301 deaths followed by Tamil Nadu with 64,603 cases with 833 deaths. States with more than 10,000 cases include Gujarat with 28,371 cases and 1,710 deaths, Uttar Pradesh (18,893), Rajasthan (15,627), Madhya Pradesh (12,261), West Bengal (14,728) and Haryana (11,520). /IANS