Covid recovery rate better from 7.10pc to 41.61pc: Health Ministry

Speaking at a press conference, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said the recovery rate in the country was 7.10 per cent on March 25 when the lockdown was imposed while it is 41.61 now in the fourth phase of lockdown.

"At least 60,490 people in the country have recovered from the disease. The recovery rate which was 7.1% in first lockdown, 11.42 % in second, 26.59% was in third lockdown, is now 41.61 %," said Agarwal.

He said the fatality rate has also been observed as declining. "Our fatality rate is one of the lowest -- 2.87 % as against the global average for case fatality which is around 6.45%. It was 3.3% on April 15 and has now reduced to 2.87 %," said the Joint Health Secretary.

Agarwal said an analysis of case mortality per lakh population indicates that India has about 0.3 deaths per lakh population which is among the lowest in the world against the statistics of 4.4 deaths per lakh population for the world.

"The relatively low death figures, both in terms of mortality per lakh population and case fatality rate, represent timely case identification and clinical management of the cases," he said.

Dr Balram Bhargava, the Director General of Indian Council of Medical Research, who was also present at the presser, said: "India has rapidly increased its testing capacity and is on track to meet the emerging requirements. India is now testing an approximate 1.1 lakh samples per day. Capacity has been increased by augmenting the number of labs, shifts, RT-PCR machines and manpower. As of today, India has 612 labs, 430 run by ICMR and 182 by private sector to test the population of COVID-19 infection."

Bhargava said most states and UTs have been working with the National Tuberculosis Elimination Program (NTEP) to deploy TrueNAT machines for COVID-19 testing. Indigenous manufacturers of RT-PCR-kits, VTM, swabs and RNA extraction kits have been identified and their production facilitated in the last few months.

The spread of the novel coronavirus was reported among 1,45,380 people on Tuesday. The Health Ministry Data revealed 6,535 new cases and 146 new fatalities in the past 24 hours. As the tally of Covid-19 cases in India touched 1,45,380, it also showed a week of continued spurt in the cases hovering close to 6,000 before almost touching the 7,000 mark.

On Monday (6,977), Sunday (6,767), Saturday (6,654), Friday (6,088) and Thursday (5,614). Of the total cases so far, 80,722 are active and 4,167 people have died.