India reported 72,049 new cases of coronavirus yesterday, dropping from the daily highs of last month in a sign infections were peaking for now, officials and experts said.

India leads the world in the average number of new infections and is expected to overtake the United States over the next several weeks as the country with the world's largest number of cases.

But since it hit a single-day high of 97,894 new cases on September 17, the country has reported a downward trend with 75,909 daily cases on an average, according to a Reuters tally.

"There is a continuous drop in our daily new cases, which is an encouraging sign," said health secretary Rajesh Bhushan. The overall tally reached 6.76 million infections yesterday while the death toll rose by 986 to 104,555.

Faced with a collapsing economy, the federal government has been pushing states to fully reopen after enforcing one of the world's strictest lockdowns in March.

Experts said the opening up led to a spike in cases in August and September, which now may have started to stabilise in the big cities.

Across the world, more than 35.8 million cases of the coronavirus have been officially diagnosed. It has killed at least 1,050,097 people since emerging in China in late 2019, according to an AFP tally.