#IndiaFightsCorona: Recovery rate climbs to a new high of nearly 68%

New Delhi:India continues on the path of COVID-19 management boosted by two significant achievements – continuously rising recovery rate among the COVID-19 patients and Case Fatality Rate that has remained much below the global average.

While the former is at a record high of 68%, the latter has touched a new low of 2.05%, thus ensuring low mortality among COVID-19 patients.

These two in tandem have enabled a higher and rising difference (more than 7.7 lakhs) between the number of recovered patients and active cases in India.

The total recoveries have jumped to 13,78,105 with recovery of 49,769 patients in the last 24 hours.

Ramped up hospital infrastructure and emphasis on efficient treatment of hospitalized patients through the Standard of Care incorporated in the Clinical Treatment Protocol issued by the Centre, have effectively ensured improvement in the recovery rate. The average daily recovered cases (7 day moving average) have increased from around 26000 cases to 44000 cases in the last 2 weeks.

Sustained efforts by the Centre and State/UT governments through focused & coordinated containment, widespread testing combined with supervised isolation and effective treatment have together ensured the decline in the percentage of active cases and rise of the percentage recovered cases.

There has been significant and sustained increase in the number of daily new recovered cases too.

India tests more than 6 lakh samples in 24 hours

In a testament to the consistent and coordinated efforts of the Centre and the State/UT governments, India continues its track record of testing more than 6 lakh COVID-19 samples each day for the fourth successive day. Expanded diagnostic lab network and facilitation for easy testing across the country have given a boost, and with 6,39,042 tests conducted in last 24 hours, India has done 2,27,88,393 tests presently. The Tests Per Million (TPM) has seen a sharp increase to 16513.

The 7 day moving average in daily tests conducted has significantly improved from around 2.69 lakh on 14th July 2020 to around 5.66 lakh on 6th August 2020.

While the cumulative testing rose from 1.2 crore on 14th July 2020 to 2.2 crore on 6th August 2020, the positivity rate has seen a rise from 7.5% to 8.87% in the same period. Although higher number of tests will push the positivity rate initially, but as the Delhi experience has amply shown, it will eventually lower when combined with other measures such as prompt isolation, tracking and timely clinical management.

The graded and evolving response has resulted in a testing strategy that steadily widened the testing net in the country. To keep up with this strategy, the testing lab network in the country is continuously strengthened which as on today consists of 1383 labs in the country; 931 labs in the government sector and 452 private labs. These include:

• Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 701 (Govt: 423 + Private: 278)

• TrueNat based testing labs: 573 (Govt: 476 + Private: 97)

• CBNAAT based testing labs: 109 (Govt: 32 + Private: 77)