In India, 70 lakh people have recovered from COVID infection

New Delhi: With 54, 366 fresh cases, India on Friday registered a total of 77.61 lakh cases of novel coronavirus. In the last 24 hours 690 new deaths were recorded taking the country's total death tally to 1.17 lakh.

According to the union health ministry, India has leaped across a significant milestone in its fight against COVID-19 as active caseload of the country has fallen below 7 lakh for the first time after two months. The active caseload was below the 7 lakh mark last on August 22.

The total positive cases of the country are 6.95 lakh and they comprise 8.96 per cent of the total cases. “With a high number of COVID-19 patients recovering every day along with a steadily falling and sustained low mortality rate, India’s trend of registering decreasing active cases continues,” health ministry officials said.

India is also reporting a high number of recoveries. The total recovered cases are nearly 70  lakhs and the difference between active and recovered cases is consistently increasing. It stands at 62.53 lakh now. The recovered cases are nearly 10 times more than the active cases, officials said adding 73,979 patients have recovered in the last 24 hours whereas the new confirmed cases are 54,366. The national Recovery Rate has further progressed to 89.53 per cent. A constant drop in daily death figures too has been noticed and the Case Fatality Rate as on date is 1.51% and 24 States/UTs have less than 20,000 active cases.

India has also crossed the 10 crore-mark in conducting tests for detection of COVID-19 with 14,42,722 tests being done in a span of 24 hours. Officials said high level of comprehensive testing on a sustained basis has also resulted in bringing down the national positivity rate. “This indicates that the rate of spread of the infection is being effectively contained. The cumulative positivity rate continues to decline as the total tests cross 10 crore,” the ministry said. The national COVID-19 positivity rate is 7.75 per cent.

Fifteen states and union territories, including Maharashtra, Kerala, Chandigarh, Goa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Delhi, are exhibiting higher COVID-19 positivity rate compared to the national figure, indicting the need for higher levels of comprehensive testing in these regions, the ministry said.

However, Health Economist Rijo M. John highlighted that of the 10 crore tests conducted by India so far, only 4.68 crores are RT-PCR. “The Test Positivity Rate on 7 day average has been declining consistently and is now at 5.2%, at the level it was on May 17. Growth of tests have been slightly above cases for a while and 7 day average daily testing has been at 11.2 lakhs. However, there are discrepancies between total tests reported by the states and ICMR. For the past few days, the 7 day average of daily number of tests reported by ICMR has been close to 2 lakhs more than those reported by the states combined. These needs to be reconciled. Most states do not report results of testing by test types separately. Many are increasingly relying on antigen tests without disclosing if false negatives are being re-tested sufficiently. There is a severe lack of transparency in reporting of some key variables by many,” John said.