India's COVID-19 recovery rate improves to 93.71 pct

The recovery rate of COVID-19 patients in India Sunday increased to 93.71 percent, the country's federal health ministry said.

"Till now 8,802,267 patients have been cured and 453,956 patients are under active medical supervision," the ministry said. "The national recovery rate is now 93.71 percent."

According to the federal health ministry, the constant increase in recoveries has ensured the reduction in actual caseload and currently, there are 4.83 percent of the total positive cases in the country.

During the last 24 hours, 41,810 fresh positive cases were reported in the country.

Over 70 percent of the daily new cases are contributed by eight states.

"70.43 percent of the daily new cases are contributed by eight states - Kerala, Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Chhattisgarh," the ministry said. "Kerala leads the tally with 6,250 new COVID-19 cases. Maharashtra has recorded 5,965 cases, while Delhi follows with 4,998 new cases."

India has progressively maintained a low Case Fatality Rate (CFR) compared to the global average. The national CFR has fallen to 1.45 percent on Sunday.

During the last 24 hours, 496 deaths were reported across the country.

"70.97 percent of the 496 case fatalities reported in the past 24 hours are contributed by eight states, Delhi, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Haryana, Punjab, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan," the ministry said. "Delhi with 89 deaths reported the maximum new fatalities. Maharashtra follows closely with 88 deaths and West Bengal reported 52 deaths."

Health officials say the successful implementation of test, track and treat strategy along with timely and appropriate treatment has led to the consistent slide in the fatality rate.

According to the health ministry, the number of recovered patients has overtaken active cases by more than 19 times.

Health officials said new daily cases continue to trend downwards with the success of Jan-Andolan (mass movement) promoting COVID-19 appropriate behaviour.

Meanwhile, India is working hard to get the vaccine for COVID-19. On Saturday Prime Minister Modi visited India's three top vaccine manufacturing centers, Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Hyderabad (Telangana) and Pune (Maharashtra) to review the development and manufacturing process of COVID-19 vaccine.

On Saturday, one of the manufacturers, Serum Institute of India (SII) after Modi's visit to their facility said it will apply within two weeks for the emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccine manufacturer said India would be purchasing 300 million to 400 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from SII.

Development of COVID-19 vaccine is still in progress. At present, five COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in advanced stages of development in India.

India's federal health minister Harsh Vardhan last month said COVID-19 vaccine would likely be available in India by early next year. However, the government has initiated a backend preparation for the largest immunization drive in the country.

On Sunday morning, the federal health ministry said the number of COVID-19 cases in the country has reached 9,392,919 and the death toll has risen to 136,696.

by Peerzada Arshad Hamid