San Francisco, Aug 3 : California, the new epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, witnessed a record surge of 9,032 new cases in 24 hours, health authorities said. With a population of around 40 million, the country's most populated state has so far registered a totol 509,162 cases to date, Xinhua news agency quoted the Department of Public Health as saying Sunday. In the past 24 hours, 132 new COVID-19 deaths were recorded, bringing the state's fatalities to 9,356. With an increase of 149,388, there have been 8,035,975 tests conducted in California so far. "As testing capacity continues to increase across the state, an increase in the number of positive cases has been expected -- increasing the importance of positivity rates to find signs of community spread," the Department said. The number of confirmed cases in California surpassed New York state last week as the largest count in the US. California has not reported any recoveries so far. /IANS