India reported fewer COVID cases, deaths post Diwali than a week before
The week post Diwali saw a further decline in the number of fresh cases of COVID-19 in India, compared to the previous week. Despite a spike in cases in the national capital, the country has reported fewer fresh cases and deaths in the past two months. The trend has continued in the third week of November, hinting at a further decline in the spread of the virus.
As of November 22, India’s COVID-19 caseload reached the 90-lakh mark (90.50 lakh cases) while the number of active cases have stood at 4.39 lakh.
More than 93 per cent (or 8.78 lakh) patients have recovered or had been discharged from the hospitals until Saturday (November 22). The death toll stands at 1.32 lakh for the same time.
Over the past two months, the country has been reporting fewer number of new cases than recoveries every day. The wider the gap between the two, the closer we are towards curbing the spread of the disease.
November 20 was the only exception in two months, as it saw 44,900 fresh cases against 44,807 recoveries.
A total of 2.77 lakh new cases were reported during this week compared to 3.11 lakh during the previous week. However, the recoveries this week was fewer – 3.10 lakh – than last week which saw the recuperation of 3.43 lakh people.
November 16 saw the highest ever gap of 13,303 cases between new cases and recoveries – the number of cases fell to 38,588 cases from 44,000 last week.
The number of fatalities crossed 1.30 lakh in the current week. Though the daily average of deaths has dropped from about a thousand fatalities to almost five hundred fatalities per day, the overall number of deaths is still piling up.
India reported 3,538 fatalities in this week compared to 3,626 deaths in the previous week. Even a slight drop in the number of fatalities is significant to assess the spread and mortality factor of the disease. November 19 saw the highest number of fatalities in this week which was 585 deaths in a day.
The death rate of India has remained constant at 1.47 per cent for the last week. The figure hasn’t changed for almost 10 days. The death rate is the number of deaths per hundred infected patients.
The test positivity rate (TPR) continued the trend it followed in the previous week. The TPR of the country remained between 3 and 5 per cent over the last week. TPR is the number of positive patients per hundred tested. The drop in this metric suggests the curbing of the spread of the disease in the community.
Sunday (November 15) reported the highest TPR of 5.1 per cent in this week. The month of August and September had reported the TPR in the range of 8 to 9 per cent. The average number of tests per day has been close to one million in this week. Despite such a huge testing, the TPR has remained unchanged. This suggests a declining trend in the new cases.