India sees record number of COVID-19 recoveries, crosses 3 crore tests

India has touched a new milestone with a record 57,584 COVID-19 recoveries within a span of 24 hours on Monday (August 17). This has pushed the country’s recovery rate to over 72 per cent, according to the Union health ministry data.

The country’s COVID-19 recoveries have reached closer to 20 lakh (19,19,842), while the actual caseload stands at 6,76,900 on date and the current comprises only 25.57 per cent of the total positive cases.

In a statement, the health ministry said that this is the result of successful and coordinated implementation of an effective containment strategy, aggressive and comprehensive testing coupled with standardised clinical management of the critical patients.

The latest state-wise data suggests the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country is a little above 26.5 lakh, including more than 51,000 fatalities.

Meanwhile, some hospitals in the national capital have said they are seeing recovered patients returning to them with recurrence of the infection.

Another landmark that the country achieved on Monday was crossing the three-crore mark for COVID-19 tests. The ministry asserted this was due to expanded diagnostic lab network and facilitation for easy testing across the country.

A total of 3,00,41,400 samples have been tested until August 16 with 7,31,697 samples being tested on Sunday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

In a testament to the focussed, consistent and coordinated efforts of the Centre, and the State and UT governments, India has set a new landmark of conducting three crore tests, the ministry said in another statement.

“With 7,31,697 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, India is on its resolved drive to increase its testing capacity to 10 lakh tests daily,” the ministry said. Building on this achievement, the Tests Per Million (TPM) have seen a sharp increase to 21,769, it said.

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While the cumulative testing rose from 1.2 crore on July 14 to three crore on August 16, the positivity rate has seen a rise from 7.5 per cent to 8.81 per cent in the same period, the statement said.

“Although higher number of tests will push the positivity rate initially, but as the Delhi experience has amply shown, it will eventually lower when combined with other measures such as prompt isolation, tracking, and timely clinical management,” the ministry said.

Noting that aggressive testing leads to early identification and isolation of COVID-19 positive cases, the ministry said this coupled with efficient clinical treatment brings the fatality rate down.

“Thus, enhanced and timely testing is not only keeping the positivity rate low but also the fatality rate low,” it said.