New Delhi: With 2,27,755 COVID-19 patients cured so far, the recovery rate has further improved to 55.49% among patients, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Sunday. “The number of patients recovering from COVID-19 continues to increase. So far, a total of 2,27,755 patients have been cured. During the last 24 hours, a total of 13,925 COVID-19 patients have been cured. The recovery rate has further improved to 55.49% amongst COVID-19 patients,” the Ministry said.
Presently, there are 1,69,451 active cases and all are under medical supervision. “The number of recovered patients has crossed the number of active patients by 58,305 on Sunday,” it said, adding, “As a concerted effort to expand the lab and testing infrastructure, the number of govt labs has been increased to 722 and private labs have been increased to 259.”
As per the Ministry, there are 547 Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs including 354 govt labs and 193 private labs. TrueNat based testing labs are 358 (341 government and 17 private) while there are 76 CBNAAT based testing labs (27 govt and 49 pvt). The number of samples tested every day also continues to grow. In the last 24 hours, 1,90,730 samples were tested. The total far is 68,07,226.
Meanwhile, Harvard Global Health Institute Director Dr Ashish Jha in an email interview in New York to PTI, has expressed concern over how quickly the new coronavirus cases are rising in India, and said when populous states like Bihar and UP get hit hard, the country could see a “large increase” in virus infections and deaths.
"Right now I’m concerned by how quickly the number of new cases are rising. India’s density may be contributing to this and we've seen high rates of spread in some of the larger metro areas like Mumbai, Delhi and also Chennai. But what concerns me most is major population areas — such as in Bihar and UP — that have not yet gotten hit very hard. When they do get hit we will likely see a large increase in the number of cases and deaths, which we need to prepare for. Given the lag between infection, onset of symptoms and death, I expect numbers to continue to rise in the coming weeks and months," Dr Ashish Jha, Harvard Global Health Instt, Director, said.
The health expert noted the cases in India may be higher than what the data suggests as while testing has improved, it has not been rolled out in a way will capture all low-symptomatic patients.
Meanwhile, India crossed another grim milestone of 4 lakh COVID cases on Sunday recording the addition of 1 more lakh in just 8 days including the latest biggest single-day spike of 15,413 cases. The jump has been marked by new peaks in daily numbers (over 12,500) for four consecutive days to take the country's tally to 4,10,461 while the death toll rose to 13,254 with 306 new fatalities.
