India reported a record daily increase of 217,353 Covid-19 infections over the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed on Friday.

It was the eighth record daily increase in the last nine days. Total cases reached nearly 14.3 million, second only to the United States which has reported more than 31 million infections.

India's deaths from Covid-19 rose by 1,185 to reach a total of 174,308, the data showed.

Many Indian hospitals were scrambling for beds and oxygen as Covid-19 infections surged with a second wave of infections centred on the rich western state of Maharashtra.

India's tally of total infections is second only to the United States, with experts blaming everything from official complacency to aggressive variants. The government has blamed failure to practise physical distancing.

The country has been producing oxygen at full capacity for each of the last two days but will have to turn to imports, with the health ministry saying it was planning to import 50,000 metric tons.

Despite injecting the third highest number of vaccines doses worldwide, India has covered only a small part of its 1.4 billion people.

India said on Thursday regulators would decide on emergency-use applications for foreign Covid-19 vaccines within three working days. India's ambassador to Moscow said deliveries of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to India were expected to begin before the end of April, the TASS news agency reported.