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With over 1 lakh Covid cases, India is still better placed than others. Here’s why
Indian government has attributed country’s lower death rate to successful disease identification protocol including testing
While India acquired the dubious distinction of crossing 100,000 coronavirus cases to break into the top 11 worst Covid-19 affected countries, the central government on Tuesday cited a healthy recovery rate from the disease to highlight some of the successes achieved in this grisly battle with the one of the worst crises the world has ever seen.
The ministry of health said that a total of 2,350 Covid19 patients have been cured in the last 24 hours taking the total number of recoveries to close to 40,000 at 39,174.
“Thus, so far, a total of 39,174 patients have been cured of COVID-19. This means a recovery rate of 38.73% amongst COVID-19 patients. The recovery rate is improving continuously,” said the ministry.
India currently has 58,802 active cases, which are all under active medical supervision and of whom, only around 2.9% are in the intensive care unit (ICU).
The ministry had earlier presented data to point out that the country had also managed the contagion’s growth rate much better than several other badly affected countries. On Tuesday, it added that India had seen 0.2 deaths/lakh population compared to approximately 4.1 deaths/lakh population for the rest of the world to back its claim.
According to the WHO situation data referenced by the health ministry, USA, UK, Italy, France, Spain, Brazil, Belgium, Germany, Iran, Canada, Netherlands, Mexico, China, Turkey and Sweden had seen more deaths per million.
“The relatively low death figures represent timely case identification and clinical management of the cases,” said the ministry highlighting the continuous scale-up in country’s testing capacity.
The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19
According to the latest ministry data, a record number of 1,08,233 samples were tested on May 18 taking the total number of samples tested to 24,25,742.
“From one laboratory conducting Covid-19 test in January, India has very rapidly increased its testing capacity by adding over 385 government laboratories and 158 private laboratories for testing in the country. Duly forging partnerships with all central government labs, state’s medical colleges, private medical colleges and private sector, the testing capacity in the country has been expanded. Other testing machines like TrueNAT and CBNAAT have also been mobilized to ramp up testing,” a health ministry communiqué said.
