Jharkhand witnessed the highest ever single-day-spike in Covid-19 cases on Tuesday as number of fresh cases reported in a day crossed the 200 mark, government data revealed.

As per a bulletin released by National Health Mission (NHM), as many as 244 fresh cases of coronavirus infection, including 59 from Ranchi alone, surfaced from 23 districts on Tuesday. No fresh cases of infection were reported from Gumla.

The Covid death toll in the state jumped to 36 on Tuesday as three patients, one each from Dhanbad, East Singhbhum and Ranchi, lost their battle against the lethal virus, government figures highlighted. All three deceased, officials said, suffered from some or the other comorbid condition.

Tuesday's findings take the total count of Covid cases in Jharkhand to 4,225 and the number of active cases to 1,761, the NHM bulletin stated. As many as 2,428 Covid patients have recovered from the infection in the state so far and 77 of them were discharged from hospital on Tuesday.

While Jharkhand's Covid recovery rate has witnessed a fall this week, the mortality rate in the state has seen an upward trend. As per government figures, Jharkhand's recovery rate on Tuesday dropped to 57.44 per cent, which is below the national average of 63.02 per cent. The mortality rate in state was 0.85 per cent on Tuesday.

The government has so far collected samples of around 2 lakh suspects for Covid tests and tested around 1.89 lakh of them. Around 2.74 lakh people have been put in home quarantine in state and around 24,000 people have been put in institutional quarantine.

Jharkhand has witnessed a surge of more than 100 in Covid cases almost every day in July so far, health officials said, adding that non-migrants too were testing positive for the virus in non-containment zones this month.

The first Covid-19 case in the state was reported from Hindpiri on March 31. A Malaysian woman, who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in New Delhi, became the first to test positive here. Soon, there was a flurry of cases in Hindpiri and the locality had to be sealed. However, cases have now reduced considerably in the locality and it is not a containment zone anymore, officials said.

A second wave of Covid-19 cases hit Jharkhand with the return of migrant workers. At least five lakh migrants returned to the state since the imposition of lockdown, and more than 2000 of them tested positive for Covid-19, officials said.