Steady fatality rate, fall in TPR point to declining COVID-19 trajectory in India
The spread of coronavirus in India seems to have taken a downturn in the last two months and the trend has continued even in the last week. All the indicators including active cases, fatalities and test positivity rate have shown a substantial fall, pointing to a dip in the spread of the virus.
The overall number of cases of coronavirus in the country is now above 10 million (about 1.01 crore) – by the end of the second last week of 2020. The recoveries in the country are also inching towards the 10-million mark. Recoveries currently stand at 97.40 lakh cases against the 1.01 crore cumulative cases of COVID-19. Active cases in the country stand at 2.81 lakh while the death toll is 1.47 lakh as of Saturday (December 26).
On Saturday (December 26), the country reported 23,067 new cases of coronavirus against 22,274 recoveries. Meanwhile only 251 deaths were reported on that day. The number of active cases is constantly on decline for over two months while it has remained below three lakh for the last week. This is a positive sign that suggests a decline of the spread of the virus.
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The trend of decline in number of fresh cases has continued for the seventh consecutive week. The last week (December 20 to 26) reported an average of 23,616 cases every day, compared to 25,403 cases per day of the previous week (December 19 to 25). An average of deaths too has declined from 358 per day to 315 deaths a day during the last week.
The difference between the fresh cases and recoveries was 24,083 cases in the last week which is almost half of the difference reported in the previous week (48,560 cases). Although the difference looks smaller, it is important to note that the fresh cases and active cases have also dropped during the same period. The number of recoveries remained higher all through the week except on Saturday when fresh cases were 23,067 and recoveries were 22,274 cases. This suggests that the trend of decline in spread continues even in this week. The country reported 1.65 lakh fresh cases and 1.89 lakh recoveries in the last week.
The lower death rate which had been India’s constant shield against the virus has continued even in the second last week of December. The death rate is the number of patients succumbing to death out of every hundred infected patients.
The death rate of the cases across the country has been at 1.45 since December 1.
The absolute number of deaths in India is 1,47,383 deaths as of Saturday. The country reported 2,207 deaths during the last week, about 300 less than the previous week’s count. The average number of deaths every week is also declining. India had crossed the mark of one lakh cases on October 3, after about 200 days of reporting the first death due to COVID-19. It took further 84 days until it added about 47,000 more cases to the tally.
The daily test positivity rate (TPR) in India has been as low as 3 per cent for over the last three weeks. This is a clear sign of decreasing spread of the virus in the country. TPR is the number of positive patients per hundred tested. The daily TPR during the last week remained below 3 per cent all through the week.
The highest TPR reported in the last week was 2.70 on Monday (December 21) and Saturday (December 26). The lowest TPR of the week was reported on Tuesday (December 22) which was 1.82 per cent. The country has conducted 7.06 lakh tests in the last week with an average of about 1 lakh tests every day. This is same as average of the previous week.