Recovery rate further improves to 76 per cent in the country

The recovery rate of COVID-19 patients continues its upward streak and has reached around 76 per cent yesterday. With sustained, pre-emptive and timely interventions over 24 lakh people in the country have successfully recovered from COVID-19. India registered a record number of recoveries of over 66 thousand patients in the last 24 hours. 

Addressing a media briefing in the capital, Union Health Secretary, Rajesh Bhushan yesterday informed that out of the total active Corona cases in the country only 0.29 per cent are on ventilators whereas nearly 2 per cent of the total patients are in the ICU.

The number of recovered patients as on Tuesday in the country is almost 3.5 times the number of active cases. There has been more than 100 per cent hike in the recoveries in the last 25 days. The case fatality rate also continues to show steady decline and now stands at 1.84 per cent. Nearly 30 States and Union Territories in the country have even lower fatality rates than the national average. 

The Health Ministry said that over 60 thousand new cases of COVID-19 have been registered in the country in the last 24 hours taking the total number of cases to 31,67,324. Presently, the total number of active Corona cases in the country is 7,04,348. In a single day, 848 deaths have also been reported taking the toll to 58,390.

At the same time, India is continuously stepping up it's COVID testing capacity. In the last 24 hours, more than



9,25,000 samples were tested taking the cumulative testing numbers till date to 3,68,27,520. The positivity rate continues to decline despite increased testing and stands at a weekly average of around 8 per cent. Tests done per million of the population in the country have also scaled a new peak of over 26 thousand.

 

Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director General, Balram Bhargava informed today in a press briefing that the remarkable feat has been achieved by rigorously following the “Test, Track and Treat” strategy. He said, early identification through Testing, Surveillance and contact tracing along with focus on timely and appropriate clinical treatment of COVID-19 patients has ensured that only a small proportion of active cases require ventilator support. 

Mr. Bhargava said that the indigenous production of testing kits in the country has brought down the cost incurred on single RT-PCR test from around Rs 2,000 rupees to nearly Rs 300. He said, the week-wise average daily tests conducted has witnessed a sharp increase from around 2.3 lakh in the first week of July 2020 to over 8 lakh in the current week.

 

Mr. Bhargava informed that the strong determinant of this milestone has been a sustained expansion of testing labs across the country. From merely one lab in January this year, the country today has 1,524 labs. Out of these, 986 are government labs while the remaining 538 are private.