India’s Covid-19 recovery rate rises to 70%

Rishikesh: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan addresses at the Convocation Ceremony of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Rishikesh on March 14, 2020. (Photo: IANS/PIB)

The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said that the country’s recovery rate has soared past 70 per cent due to successful implementation of an effective containment strategy, and aggressive and comprehensive testing coupled with standardised clinical management.

India has logged more than 23 lakh coronavirus cases and over 46,000 deaths. Even though the infections are racing ahead, with the country adding at least 1 lakh new cases every two days, the gap between recoveries and active cases is growing every day.

New BMC Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal visits BYL Nair Hospital, one of the major Covid-19 facilities in the city, on the first day after taking his new charge.

According to the ministry, “The record highest single-day recoveries at 56,110 was registered in the last 24 hours. The coordinated efforts of the Centre, state and UT governments have resulted in continuously increasing average daily recoveries. The recovery rate has reached another high of 70.38 per cent.”

Out of the total 2,329,638 cases, recoveries have surged to 1,639,599. The actual caseload of the country is the active cases, which currently stand at 6,43,948 and are only 27.64 per cent of the total cases.

In the first week of July, the daily average recovered cases were at 15,000 which jumped to more than 50,000 in the first week of August.

Besides this, as a result of the focus on effective clinical treatment, use of non-invasive, improved and coordinated services of ambulances and timely treatment have resulted in a drop in the case fatality rate.

The case fatality rate is the proportion of people who die from a specified disease among all individuals diagnosed with the disease over a certain period of time and is used as a measure of disease severity, and it stands at 1.98 per cent.

The Health Ministry said that the country’s test, track and treat strategy has achieved another peak with 7,33,449 tests done in the last 24 hours. This has taken the cumulative tests to more than 2.6 crore. The tests per million has also jumped to 18,852.

“To keep up with this strategy, the testing lab network in the country is continuously strengthened which as of today consists of 1,421 labs in the country; 944 labs in the government sector and 477 private labs,” the ministry added.

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