NEW DELHI, May 12. /TASS/. India has documented 348,421 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, the total number of infections since the beginning of the epidemic in the country has reached 23,340,938. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the number of fatalities caused by this infection has increased by 4,205 over the past 24 hours, bringing the total count to 254,197.

The number of daily fatalities caused by the coronavirus infection became a new record high for India. The previous daily high of 4,187 fatalities was registered on May 8, the one on May 6 amounted to 3,980 fatalities.

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, since May 5, the country has recorded about 3 mln new cases of the infection. India has been registering over 300,000 new daily infections since April 22, and over 200,000 - since April 15. At the same time, before early March India was recording less than 20,000 new daily cases, authorities thought that the country had conquered the infection.

Meanwhile, the number of recoveries has increased over 24 hours by 355,338 reaching 19,382,642. Some 3,704,099 coronavirus patients continue treatment which is 11,122 less than the day before.

India is in the second place worldwide (following the US) in terms of a total number of the coronavirus infections and in the third place in terms of fatalities caused by this infection (following the US and Brazil).

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, over the past 24 hours, 2,446,674 people have been inoculated against the coronavirus infection, the total number of people who got vaccinated has reached 175,235,991. India remains one of the world leaders in terms of vaccination rates, the ministry noted.