From Our Bureau
19TH JULY 2020
India witnessed a big surge with 38,902 fresh COVID-19 positive cases reported on Sunday, the highest for a single day, taking the country’s cumulative tally to 10,77,618. The death toll rose to 26,816, with 543 fatalities recorded in the last 24 hours.
Proactive measures of Central and State/Union Territory governments of aggressive testing and timely diagnosis has helped in detecting cases early. Effective clinical management of the moderate and severe cases through a well-executed Standard of Care protocol has ensured high rate of recovery among the COVID patients.
Recovered Cases outnumber Active Cases by more than 3 lakhs
The last 24 hours saw a sharp increase of 23,672 COVID patients who recovered. The gap between recovered patients and active COVID-19 cases has further increased to 3,04,044. The total number of recovered cases is 6,77,423. The recovery rate as of now is at 62.86 percent.
Medical attention is being provided to all the 3,73,379 active cases, in hospitals and home isolation.
India’s Case Fatality Rate (CFR) falls below 2.5 percent for the first time
29 States and UTs register a CFR lower than the national average
The focused efforts of Central and State/UT governments on efficient clinical
management of hospitalized cases have ensured that India’s Case Fatality Rate
has fallen below 2.5 percent. With effective Containment Strategy, aggressive
testing and standardized clinical management protocols based on holistic
Standard of Care approach, the Case Fatality Rate has significantly
dipped. The Case Fatality Rate is
progressively falling and currently, it is 2.49 percent. India has
one of the lowest fatality rates in the world.
Under the guidance of the Central government, States/UTs have ramped up the testing and hospital infrastructure by combining public and private sector efforts. Many States have conducted the population surveys to map and identify the vulnerable population like the elderly, pregnant women and those with co-morbidities. This, with the help of technological solutions like Mobile Apps, has ensured keeping the high-risk population under continuous observation, thus aiding early identification, timely clinical treatment and reducing fatalities.
At the ground level, frontline health workers like ASHAs and ANMs have done a commendable job of managing the migrant population and to enhance awareness at the community level. As a result, there are 29 States and UTs with CFR lower than the India average. Five States and UTs have a CFR of Zero and 14 States and UTs have a CFR of less than 1 percent. This shows commendable work done by Public Health Apparatus of the country.
Tests Per Million (TPM) close to 10,000
The country’s testing infrastructure has been substantially ramped up. The testing strategy prescribed by ICMR allows all registered medical practitioners to recommend testing. The Rapid Antigen Point of Care (POC) Test coupled with the facilitation of widespread gold-standard RT-PCR based testing by States/UTs has resulted in a surge in the number of samples tested. 3,58,127 samples have been tested in the last 24 hours. With total of 1,37,91,869 samples tested the testing per million (TPM) for India has reached 9994.1.
Consistently expanding diagnostic lab network comprises of 1262 labs, including 889 labs in the government sector and 373 private labs. These include: Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 648 (Govt: 397 + Private: 251), TrueNat based testing labs: 510 (Govt: 455 + Private: 55) and CBNAAT based testing labs: 104 (Govt: 37 + Private: 67). (eom)
