Downward trend of COVID-19 spread continues in October last week

The gradual decline in the number of new cases of coronavirus has continued in India for over a month and a half. Numbers suggest that the country has curbed the spread in many ways despite a spike in a few states like Kerala and Chhattisgarh. The daily case average has dropped from almost one lakh, highest in the pandemic, to about 46,000 new cases a day.

As of October 31, the total number of cases in India stands at 81.37 lakh while 74.32 lakh patients have recovered during the same time. The death toll of the country stands at 1.21 Lakh fatalities for the same time.

The gap between daily cases and recoveries is also increasing with every passing week. About 3.22 lakh new cases were reported in the country during the last seven days. On the other hand recoveries were 4.16 lakh during the same time.

Similarly, daily recoveries had also been more than the new positive cases. For the last one week, the daily case average was about 46,000 cases compared to about 54,000 new cases per day in the previous week.

The average recoveries were about 59,500 per day for the last seven days. More the gap between the two, more are the chances of containing the spread across the country. The weekly recoveries were 4.16 lakh for the last week. The overall recovery rate of the country stands at 91.34 per cent as of Saturday.

Though the cases are still increasing, the share of the fatalities has decreased substantially over the last two weeks. During the last week, country reported 3,685 deaths compared to 4,958 deaths during the week prior to that. This decline suggests that our battle is getting stronger against the virus. October saw 24,141 deaths compared to 33,028 in September.

The death rate in India is 1.49 per cent, as of Saturday. It has declined by 0.20 per cent over the last seven days. The death rate is the number of patients succumbed to death per hundred infected patients. The average number of deaths had dropped from about 1,000 every day to 526 fatalities.

The declining test positivity rate (TPR) had been an important parameter that suggests the further decline in the spread of infection in India. The daily TPR has dropped to the range of 4 per cent from over 10 per cent in the peak period of the pandemic. TPR is the number of positive patients per hundred tested.

Interestingly, the government has maintained the number of tests as they were before still the TPR is showing downward trend. About 74.13 lakh tests for coronavirus were conducted during the last week in India.

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