From Our Bureau
24TH JULY 2020
India witnessed a big surge with 49,310 fresh COVID-19 positive cases reported on Friday, the highest for a single day, taking the country’s cumulative tally to 12,87,945. The death toll rose to 30,601, with 740 fatalities recorded in the last 24 hours.
The trend of highest ever single-day recoveries of COVID-19 patients continues unabated. For the third day in a row, the last 24 hours have recorded another high with 34,602 patients recovering. This has significantly bolstered the total number of recovered patients to cross 8 lakh and currently stands at 8,17,209.
This has strongly boosted the recovery rate to reach a new high of 63.45 percent among COVID-19 patients. As a result of these constantly growing number of recoveries, the recovered patients outnumber the active cases (4,40,135 today) by 3,77,074. This difference is showing a progressively growing upward trend.
The State/Union Territory efforts are bolstered by the Central teams of experts sent to high case-load areas and through strategic discussions held by Central Government through video conferences with State and District officials. With the dedicated efforts of healthcare workers, the recoveries are improving and case fatality is continuously falling, which currently stands at 2.38 percent.
The sustained rise in number of
recoveries is the result of a well formulated and executed strategy of containment
of COVID-19 by the State/UT governments under the guidance of Union Government.
It primarily focuses on early detection through aggressive testing along with
house-to-house surveys, contact tracing and surveillance of SARI/ILI cases to
actively search for cases in the highly vulnerable categories.
This is followed by effective containment plans and efficient clinical management through the ramped up three-tier health infrastructure and well executed Standard of Care Protocol. These have successfully aided in effective treatment in the hospitals and through home isolation which in turn has ensured that the hospitals remain unburdened for critical patients.
Accelerated increase in lab infrastructure continues to drive the ‘Test Track and Treat’ strategy
More than 1.5 crore COVID samples (1,54,28,170) have been tested, till now. In the last 24 hours, 3,52,801 samples have been tested for COVID-19 identification. This translates to 11180 tests per million (TPM) for India, which has seen a steady increase since the adoption of this strategy.
The rise in TPM has been achieved with a steady rise in the number of labs (1,290 so far), and efforts by the Central Government and State/UT governments to facilitate wide-spread testing through an array of options.
The RT-PCR labs are the backbone of the latest testing strategy prescribed by ICMR. The number of labs in the public and private sectors are seeing a progressive enhancement. There are 897 labs in the government sector and 393 private labs. These include: Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 653 (Govt: 399 + Private: 254), TrueNat based testing labs: 530 (Govt: 466 + Private: 64) and CBNAAT based testing labs: 107 (Govt: 32 + Private: 75). (eom)
