E-Paper
Active Covid-19 cases drop to lowest in over 150 days: Data
As the brutal second wave of the outbreak ebbs in the country, the number of active cases in India has now dropped to 341,189, the lowest since March 20, according to HT’s Covid-19 dashboard
For the first time in over five months, the number of active cases of Covid-19 in the country have dropped below the 350,000-mark, data shows, as the contraction of the outbreak continued even as India neared the key milestone of administering 50% of its adult population with doses of the coronavirus vaccine.
As the brutal second wave of the outbreak ebbs in the country, the number of active cases in India has now dropped to 341,189, the lowest since March 20, according to HT’s Covid-19 dashboard.
At its worst, the number of active cases in the country had soared to a peak of 3.75 million on May 9. This means that the number of active cases has dropped over 90% from peak levels seen during India’s second wave.
Tracking active cases (those people who are still under treatment for the viral disease) in a region is crucial because this figure directly reflects the pressure on the health care system in a region.
The development comes at a time when India is nearing a significant milestone of administering at least one shot of the Covid vaccine to nearly half of the country’s adult population.
Till Sunday morning, the latest data made available by the Union health ministry show that over 581.5 million shots have been administered to more than 450.7 million people across the country – 320 million people having been partially vaccinated and 130.7 million people received both doses of the vaccine. When seen alongside population projections for 2021 by Census of India, which places the number of adults in the country at 940 million, this means that around 48% of adults in the country have been administered jabs (34% received a single dose, and 14% received both).
On Sunday, the country recorded 25,426 new infections of the disease and 385 new deaths, according to HT’s Covid-19 dashboard.
The seven-day average of new infections in the country, meanwhile, has dropped to a 156-day low of 31,965 as cases continued to drop nearly across the country. This number, which represents a region’s Covid curve, had touched a peak of 391,819 for the week ending May 9, and has since dropped nearly 92% from peak levels.
“Sustained and collaborative efforts by the Centre and the states/UTs continue the trend of less than 50,000 daily new cases that is being reported for 56 consecutive days now,” the Union health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Even Kerala, which is currently the biggest outbreak centre in the country accounting for nearly half of India’s active cases and was the only state where the outbreak was expanding at an alarming rate, has now started seeing a drop in cases numbers. On Sunday, the southern state recorded 10,402 new Covid-19 cases – the lowest in a single day in over a month.
The daily positivity rate – the proportion of samples tested returning positive for the Sars-CoV-2 – on Saturday was at 1.8%. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that when a region’s positivity rate remains below 5% threshold, it implies that the government is testing adequately to control the outbreak. In India, the positivity rate has now remained below the 5% threshold for over 80 days, data shows.
