India's COVID-19 fatality rate is 2.82 per cent and is one of the lowest in the world, said Lav Agrawal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry on Tuesday. 10 per cent of India's population accounts for 50 per cent of the country's COVID-19 linked deaths and 73 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in India are people with co-morbidities, he added.
Agrawal also asserted that the coronavirus recovery rate is continuously improving in the country. "Till now, 95,527 COVID-19 patients have recovered. The recovery rate is now 48.07 per cent," he said. India's recovery rate on April 15 was 11.42 per cent, he added.
"We have asked all states to analyse the trajectory of the cases in their respective states. If a state thinks that it needs to set up temporary COVID19 care centres then it must do so," Agrawal said.
Meanwhile, India has 681 laboratories that are approved for conducting COVID-19 tests - 476 in Government sector and 205 in the private sector, as of June 1, said Nivedita Gupta, Scientist at Indian Council of Medical Research. "Today, we are conducting 1 lakh 20 thousand tests every day," she added.
"We've been using indigenous platforms too for ramping up COVID-19 testing capacity. Truenat screening & confirmatory tests have now been validated. Outreach of testing has hence been increased since this is available in primary health centres and districts," Gupta said.
"Indian RNA extraction kits are now available in good number, RT-PCR kits by 11-12 indigenous vendors are now being used, we are now in a comfortable position as reg. testing, due to identification and hand-holding of domestic players," added the ICMR scientist.
Talking about the transmission of the virus, she said, "Instead of the use of 'community transmission', we need to understand the extent of the spread of the disease. We are far from the peak. Our measures to curtail the disease are effective. India has been very good in the reduction in mortality."
Meanwhile, India is inching closer to the two-lakh cases mark.
