COVID-19: India crosses one crore mark, recovery rate at 95%

An increase in caseload and a rise in recovery were the high points of the COVID situation in the country, as per data provided by the Union Ministry of Health.

On Saturday, India’s COVID-19 caseload rose to 1,00,31,223 with 26,624 new infections being reported in a day, while the number of people who recuperated from the disease surged to 95.80 lakh.

The death toll increased to 1,45,477 with 341 new fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed. The number of people who recuperated from the disease surged to 95,80,402 (recovery rate 95.51 per cent), while the COVID-19 case fatality rate was put at 1.45 per cent. India is now the second country after the US to have reported more than ten million cases. The country has the third-highest death toll followed by the US (3.23 lakh) and Brazil (1.86 lakh).

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The COVID-19 active caseload remained below 4 lakh for the 14th consecutive day.
There are 3,05,344 active coronavirus infections in the country which comprises 3.04 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.

The declining trend in COVID numbers continued in India for more than six weeks as of today. An average of 25,403 cases were reported in the country every day during the last week (13 to 19 December) compared to an average of 31,223 cases per day in the previous week. Similarly, the average deaths per day decreased from 418 to 358 fatalities per day.

The number of recoveries had been more than the number of cases during the last week. In that week, the country reported 1.77 lakh cases and 2.26 lakh recoveries. The difference between the two was 48,560 cases while that of the previous week, 46,942 cases. Despite the decrease in the number of fresh cases, the difference between these two metrics is constantly increasing. This suggests a clear trend of decline in the spread of the virus.

The maximum difference between the two was reported on Tuesday (December 15) when it was 12,412 cases while the lowest difference was on Sunday (December 13), 2882 cases.

India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past  60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.

According to the ICMR, 16,11,98,195  samples had been tested up to December 19 with 11,07,681 samples being tested on Saturday.

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India reported 2508 deaths in the past week compared to 2,928 deaths in the week before that. The number of weekly deaths is also declining every subsequent week.

The country crossed one crore case in 325 days. A union government tweet said recoveries were more than 30 times the active cases. “The Central government’s calibrated strategies through a ‘whole of government’ approach have sharply focussed on high Recovery Rate and low Fatality Rate on a sustained basis,” a tweet by the Health Ministry said.

The country managed to keep its death rate low, at 1.45 per cent in the past 21 days. The death rate is the number of patients who succumbed to death out of every hundred infected patients.

The daily test positivity rate (TPR) has been in the range of 2 to 3.2 per cent during the past week. It dropped from five to three per cent over the past four weeks. TPR is the number of positive patients per hundred tests conducted by the laboratory. The highest value of TPR was 3.17 per cent on Monday (December 14) while the lowest was 2.06 per cent on Saturday (December 18).

Maharashtra registered the highest number of cases, with 18.88 lakh cases; followed by Karnataka, 9.07 lakh; Andhra Pradesh, 8.77 lakh; Tamil Nadu, 8.04 lakh; Kerala, 6.93 lakh; and Delhi, 6.14 lakh.

(With inputs from Agencies)