Recovery rate improves to over 48%
ONKAR SINGH / NEW DELHI
India has registered over 200,000 cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). It has become seventh most affected country in the world. The only silver lining is that India’s fatality rate at less than 3% is among the lowest of the severely affected countries, which means that while the infection is spreading, it is not leading to as many deaths as elsewhere. While this is a health advantage India must sustain and build on, the situation is worrying.
India crossed 100,000 cases on May 18 and the doubling rate is about 15 days. If this persists, it means that by the middle of June, India may be close to 400,000 cases; by the first week of July, it could cross a million cases. This also means that if the current fatality rate stays static, India may witness close to 30,000 deaths from the disease by early July.
While this may be low in relation to other countries, it still represents a staggeringly high loss of precious Indian lives within a period of four months since the disease started spreading in India. Now, take into account the fact that through May, the lockdown was still in force, albeit with greater relaxations in the last fortnight of the month. The country has now substantially opened up, which, all experts agree, could lead to a sharp increase in cases.
COVID-19 recovery rate improves to over 48%
Health and Family Welfare Ministry said that recovery rate reached 48.07 per cent in the country and a total 95 thousand 527 people affected with corona virus have cured so far. It said, recovery rate has improved continuously and in the first phase of lockdown, the recovery rate reached to 11.42 percent and in second phase it reached around 27 per cent. During the third phase of lockdown which ended on 18th May, the figure of recovery rate reached to 38.29 per cent.
In a media briefing in New Delhi today, Health Ministry said, however, number of corona cases are increasing in India, but in comparison to the other countries in the world, less cases and deaths have been reported. It said, 14 countries with popular numbers similar to India have reported 22.5 times more cases and 55.2 times more deaths in comparison. It said, surveillance, contact tracing, isolation and timely clinical management have reduced the fatality rate in the country. Ministry said, case fatality was 3.30 per cent on 15th April and now it is at 2.82 per cent which is lowest among the other countries of the world. The worldwide fatality rate is 6.13 percent.
Ministry said, case fatalities per lakh population in India is 0.41 per cent which is low in comparison to world which stands at 4.9 per cent. Health Ministry also refuted claims of under reporting of Covid-19 cases saying that states are doing causality assessment and attributing cause of death accordingly.
Indian Council of Medical Research, ICMR has said that testing capacities are scaled up during the last two months and now 1 lakh tests are being done everyday. It said, total 681 laboratories across India have been given approval to conduct the test for Covid-19 including 476 government laboratories and 205 private laboratories’ chains.
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