NEW DELHI: India's COVID-19 tally crossed 27 million on Wednesday, reaching 27,157,795 with 208,921 new confirmed cases recorded in the past 24 hours, said the federal health ministry.

An additional 4,157 deaths from the coronavirus epidemic were reported since Tuesday morning in the South Asian country, taking the death toll to 311,388, Xinhua news agency reported.

There are currently 2,495,591 active cases in the country after a decrease of 91,191 cases in the past 24 hours. The number of daily active cases has been on the decline over the past few days, after a continuous surge since mid-April.

A total of 24,350,816 patients have recovered from the pandemic and been discharged from hospitals across the country, showed the latest data from the federal health ministry.

India's nationwide vaccination drive kicked off on January 16. So far 200,662,456 vaccine doses have been administered to people across the country.

A total of 2,039,087 vaccine doses were given on Tuesday alone.

Currently the third phase of COVID-19 vaccination is going on, covering all people aged 18 years and above, with an acute shortage of vaccines being felt across the country.

Meanwhile, the federal government has ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities in India, where 334,811,496 tests have been conducted till Tuesday, including 2,217,320 on Tuesday alone, showed the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research on Wednesday.

Three COVID-19 vaccines are being used in India's vaccination efforts, which are the Covishield, the Covaxin, and the Russia-made Sputnik-V.

-- BERNAMA