From Our Bureau
7th SEPTEMBER 2020
India witnessed a big spurt with 90,802 fresh COVID-19 positive cases reported on Monday, the highest ever tally for a single day, taking the country’s cumulative cases to 42,04,613. The death toll rose to 71,642, with 1,016 fatalities recorded in the last 24 hours.
Incidentally, India has moved to the second place now in total number of COVID-19 positive cases among the countries across the world. It ranks next to the United States in overall number of cases. India now ranks third in total number of fatalities, after the United States and Brazil, which occupy the top two slots. Moreover, the daily tally of cases and deaths in India is the highest among all the countries across the globe now.
Meanwhile, on a continuous upward trajectory, India’s total recovered cases have crossed 32.5 lakh (32,50,429) today, with 69,564 patients being discharged in the last 24 hours. This has resulted in the Recovery Rate touching 77.31 percent.
Various calibrated and focussed actions undertaken within the umbrella strategy of TEST, TRACK and TREAT have enabled early identification of cases through aggressive and wide scale testing. Better ambulance services and seamless point-to-point management of patients to facilitate their timely hospitalisation before their health deteriorates has led to a high number of COVID-19 patients recovering and being discharged from the hospitals.
This has also resulted in the declining Case Fatality Rate, which stands at a new low of 1.70 percent today. Supervised isolation in homes and facility settings, following effective Standard of Care protocol, has hugely aided recovery of mild and moderate cases.
Five States are contributing 60 percent of total cases with Maharashtra at the top with 21.6 percent, followed by Andhra Pradesh (11.8 percent), Tamil Nadu (11.0 percent), Karnataka (9.5 percent) and Uttar Pradesh at 6.3 percent.
Maharashtra also contributed 26.76 percent of the active cases in the country, followed by Andhra Pradesh (11.30 percent), Karnataka (11.25 percent),Uttar Pradesh (6.98 percent) and Tamil Nadu (5.83 percent). These 5 States presently contribute 62 percent of total active cases.
The total number of active cases stands at 8,82,542, accounting for 20.99 percent of total confirmed cases today.
In the last 24 hours, Andhra Pradesh recorded the highest recoveries with 11,915 newly recovered cases. Karnataka and Maharashtra saw 9,575 and 7,826 recoveries while Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh witnessed 5,820 and 4,779 new recoveries, respectively. These 5 States together contributed 57 percent of the recoveries in the last 24 hours.
India is one of the few countries that have reported very high numbers of daily testing. The daily testing capacity has crossed 11.70 lakh.
India’s cumulative tests are nearly 5 crore (4,95,51,507) as on date. As many as 7,20,362 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours.
As a result of the country-wide ramped up testing, 1,33,33,904 tests were conducted in the last two weeks.
The Central Government’s policies are continuously evolving in the larger global context.
Following on the heels of several measures to facilitate wider testing by the people, recently the Central Government has issued the revised and updated Advisory which provides for the first time ‘Testing on Demand.” The States/Union Territories have also been given wider flexibilities to simplify modalities to enable higher levels of testing.
The daily testing average had been on a continuous upward incline from around 7 lakh tests being conducted per day in the 3rd week of August to 10 lakh tests per day in the 1st week of September.
Higher testing enables early identification of confirmed cases, which in turn leads to timely initiation of effective treatment in supervised home/facility isolation or in hospitals. These measures aid faster and higher numbers of recovery, lower fatality and saving of more lives. (eom)
