Gandhinagar, June 29 Coronavirus continues to batter Gujarat, as 624 new cases were detected, taking the total count to over 31,000-mark, though daily death count has reduced, health officials said on Sunday.

The state has been witnessing over 580 new cases of virus infection everyday, for the last couple of days, taking the count of infected persons and casualties higher and higher. Surpassing the Saturday's highest count of 615, the state Registered 624 new cases, taking the total to 31,397.

Ahmedabad came up with 211 new cases, a substantial decrease from 300, over the past week or so.

Now Surat is turning out to be a new epicenter in the state. The city witnessed the second highest number of positive cases detected so far -- 184, matching Friday's 182.

Surat was followed by Vadodara, which has a steady daily count of around 44-45 positive cases. Sunday was no exception as 44 new cases were added. Vadodara was followed by Valsad (36), Gandhinagar and Patan (11 each), Rajkot, Kutch, Surendranagar, Amreli and Junagadh (10 each), Mehsana and Bhavnagar (8 each), Banaskantha and Bharuch (7 each), Kheda (6), Aravalli, Navsari and Morbi (4 each), Sabarkantha, Anand and Botad (3 each), Panchmahals, Jamnagar and Porbandar (2 each) and Gir-Somnath, Tapi and Narmada with one positive case each.

The silver lining in the Corona crisis since last couple of days is that, the number of casualties which had been over 30 for almost entire month of June has now come down under 20. Just like previous three days, Sunday reported 18 casualties out of which Ahmedabad had the highest share of 13 casualties, while 3 patients died in Surat.

With this, the death toll in the state has crossed 1,800-mark with 1,809 total fatalities. The total number of Corona deaths in Ahmedabad has reached 1,426 (78.82 per cent), 151 died in Surat, 49 in Vadodara, 29 in Gandhinagar, 16 in Aravalli, 15 each in Panchmahals and Patan, 13 each in Bhavnagar and Anand and 11 have died in Mehsana.

The death rate in Ahmedabad which had been around 81 per cent has come down to less than 80 per cent. In the last two days, it has further come down to 78.82 per cent. Out of the total 1,809 deaths 770 people succumbed to the virus in 28 days of June. Gujarat has one of the highest mortality rate for Corona in the country -- 5.76 per cent.

Out of 31,397 cases, Ahmedabad has the highest 20,500, followed by Surat with 4,424 Vadodara 2,170, Gandhinagar 636, Mehsana 259, Rajkot 250, Bhavnagar 247, Bharuch 202, Anand and Aravalli with 196 each, Jamnagar 189, Banaskantha 176, Patan 175, Panchmahals 170, Sabarkantha 169, Kutch 148, Kheda 145, Mahisagar 135 and Surendranagar and Valsad with 129 each.

On Sunday, the health authorities carried out 6,158 RT-PCR tests. Till now the health authorities have conducted 3,57,148 tests in Gujarat. A total of 379 patients were discharged. Till now, total 22,417 patients have been discharged in the state.

There are 6,780 active cases, out of which the condition of 6,709 is stable, whereas 71 critical patients are still on ventilator.

Gujarat registers highest 624 cases, deaths cross 1,800