DW BUREAU / Chandigarh Punjab on Saturday witnessed 595 more coronavirus cases, pushing the infection tally in the state to 181,597, a health bulletin stated. With 11 more fatalities, the death toll rose to 5,825, according to the medical bulletin. There are 4,436 active cases as of now. On Friday, 628 COVID-19 cases had surfaced in the state. Punjab has been witnessing an uptick in fresh coronavirus cases for more than two weeks. Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar saw a maximum of 75 new cases, Jalandhar 70, Patiala 69 and Ludhiana 62, among the new cases that surfaced in the state. A total of 368 coronavirus patients were discharged after recovering from infection, taking the number of cured persons to 1,71,336, as per the bulletin. There are 14 critical patients who are on ventilator support while 79 are on oxygen support, the bulletin said. Over 29,000 samples were collected on Saturday. A total of 49,82,773 samples have been collected for testing so far in the state, it said. India registered a single-day spike of over 16,000 COVID-19 cases for the third day in a row on Saturday, pushing the infection tally to 1,10,79,979, while the recoveries surged to 1,07,63,451, according to Union Health Ministry data. A total of 16,488 novel coronavirus cases were reported in a day, while the death toll rose to 1,56,938 with 113 new fatalities, showed the data updated at 8 am on Saturday. The active case count has further increased to 1,59,590, which comprises 1.44 per cent of the total infections, the data stated. The number of recoveries reached 1,07,63,451, which translates to a national COVID-19 recovery rate of 97.14 per cent and the case fatality rate stands at 1.42 per cent. A total of 16,577 new COVID-19 cases were reported in India on Friday, while 16,738 fresh infections were registered in the country on Thursday. India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7; 30 lakh on August 23; 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past  60 lakh on September 28; 70 lakh on October 11; crossed 80 lakh on October 29; 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed one crore on December 19. The 113 new fatalities include 48 from Maharashtra , 15 from Punjab and 14 from Kerala. The death toll from the pandemic stands at 52,041 in Maharashtra, 12,488 in Tamil Nadu, 12,320 in Karnataka, 10,906 in Delhi, 10,263 in West Bengal, 8,725 in Uttar Pradesh and 7,169 in Andhra Pradesh. For the first time, a coronavirus-linked death has been reported in Lakshadweep. The Health Ministry stressed that more than 70 per cent of the deaths were caused due to comorbidities. (editor@dailyworld.in)