From Our Bureau
3RD AUGUST 2020
India witnessed a big surge with 52,972 fresh COVID-19 positive cases reported on Monday, taking the country’s cumulative tally to 18,03,695. The death toll rose to 38,135, with 771 fatalities recorded in the last 24 hours.
India’s Case Fatality Rate (CFR) further drops to 2.11 percent
Meanwhile, India continues to improve the Case Fatality Rate (CFR), and maintain its global position of having one of the lowest COVID fatalities rates. With a further fall, the current CFR touched 2.11 percent today. This is the outcome of the well-conceived and effectively implemented strategy of “Test, Track and Treat” which has guided the COVID management in the country.
The management strategy of COVID-19 also focuses on early detection and isolation of cases with seamless patient management and prioritising care of the high-risk population using field health care workers leading to increase in recoveries across the country.
India has seen more than 40,574 patients recovered in the last 24 hours. This takes the total recoveries to 11,86,203 and Recovery Rate to 65.77 percent amongst COVID-19 patients.
With improving daily recovery numbers, the gap between the recovered cases and the active cases has increased to more than 6 lakh. Presently, it is 6,06,846. This means the actual active case load is 5,79,357 and all are under medical supervision.
India crosses a milestone, conducts more than 2 crore COVID tests
In a landmark achievement, India has tested 2,02,02,858 COVID-19 samples so far. This is pursuant to the key strategy followed by State/UT governments under the guidance of Centre for management of COVID-19 to “Test aggressively, Track efficiently and Isolate and Treat promptly”. Effective implementation of this approach has led to ramping up the testing capacity across the country and facilitated widespread COVID testing of people.
With 3,81,027 samples tested in the last 24 hours, the number of Tests Per Million (TPM) has increased to 14,640. While the country’s TPM has demonstrated a steady upward trend indicating the growing testing network, 24 States and UTs have reported higher testing per million than the national average.
The testing lab network in the country is continuously strengthened with 1,348 labs in the country; 914 labs in the government sector and 434 private labs. These include: Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 686 (Govt: 418 + Private: 268), TrueNat based testing labs: 556 (Govt: 465 + Private: 91) and CBNAAT based testing labs: 106 (Govt: 31 + Private: 75).
The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has given approval to Serum Institute of India, Pune, to conduct Phase II+III clinical trials of Oxford University-Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine (COVISHIELD) in India. This will hasten the development of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued Revised Guidelines for International Arrivals in supersession of the Guidelines issued on the subject dated 24th May 2020. They will be operational from 00.01 Hrs, 8th August 2020. (eom)
