New Delhi, Feb 25 : Fresh Covid-19 cases are showing an alarming upward trend over the past one week, with the country reporting 16,738 cases in the last 24 hours taking the overall tally to 1,10,46,914 on Thursday, Union Health Ministry said. The rise in new cases is almost 2,996 more than previous day. India has been recording less than 15,000 new infections daily with the toll not crossing the 200-mark over the last one month. However, the number spiked possibly owing to "mutations and new strains", as has been studied by the laboratories involved in Covid detection across the country. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said that there were 138 more deaths taking the overall toll to 1,56,705. Last week, officials said that the average daily new infections for the last 15 days were oscillating between 9,000 to 12,000 while the deaths were between 78 to 120. On February 9, India had reported 9,110 new cases, the lowest this year so far. Last year, the lowest 9,633 cases were recorded on June 3. As per the Ministry's data, there are 1,51,708 active cases at present after 11,799 patients were discharged in a day. Till now, 1,07,38,501 persons have been discharged so far. The recovery rate has remained to 97.25 per cent, while the fatality rate is 1.42 per cent. On Wednesday, 84 per cent of the new cases came from six states -- Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Karnataka and Gujarat, while Six states accounted for 84.62 per cent of the new deaths included Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. The Ministry also informed that 7,93,383 samples were tested on Wednesday. The cumulative tests done by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) so far stands at 21,38,29,658 So far, 1,26,71,163 doses of corona vaccine have been administered in the country since the drive began on January 16 after approval for 'Covishield' and 'Covaxin'. As per the Union Health Ministry, India has become the fastest nation in terms of the vaccine doses administered, even though many countries had launched their vaccination campaigns much earlier. /IANS