DW BUREAU / chandigarh Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal, while interacting with media persons at NC College of Engineering Technical Campus, Israna, on Saturday said that the situation in the State due to COVID-19 is gradually coming back to normalcy. However, it is very important to ensure that everyone is taking precautionary steps to prevent it. He said that the people have to incorporate social distancing as well as the habit of wearing masks in their daily routine. At the same time, sanitization has to be continuously adopted, he added. He said that everyone must ensure compliance with the guidelines issued by the Central and State Government from time to time, only then would the COVID-19 pandemic be overcome. Deputy Commissioner, Panipat, Dharmender Singh, Superintendent of Police, Panipat, Manisha Chaudhary, former Minister Krishan Lal Panwar, and Mayor Panipat, Avneet Kaur, were present among others. Manohar Lal also visited Khanpur Medical College on Saturday. With 22,771 people testing positive for the novel coronavirus in a day, the highest so far, India's COVID-19 tally climbed to 6,48,315 on Saturday, while the death toll rose to 18,655 with 442 new fatalities, according to the Union Health Ministry's data. With a steady rise, the number of recoveries stands at 3,94,226 with 14,335 COVID-19 patients having been cured in the last 24 hours, according to the updated data at 8 am. The number of recovered patients exceeded the active cases by 1,58,793 as of Saturday. There are 2,35,433 active cases of COVID-19 presently in the country, the data showed. "The recovery rate has further increased to 60.81 per cent," the Union Health Ministry said. The total number of confirmed cases also include foreigners. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a cumulative total of 95,40,132 samples have been tested up to July 3 with 2,42,383 samples being tested on Friday. "The efforts to expand the testing labs network in the country have led to their numbers increasing every day. There are as many as 1,087 labs in the country -- 780 labs in the government sector and 307 private labs. "Facilitation of widespread testing by States/UTs has spurred the number of samples tested every day," the health ministry said. This is the second consecutive day when coronavirus cases have increased by more than 20,000. There has been a surge of 4,57,780 COVID-19 cases from June 1 till date. (editor@dailyworld.in)