National rate of recovery rises to 48.2%, says govt
POSITIVE SIGNS Health ministry says number of patients requiring ventilator support not high
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Our recovery rate has been moving up. The number of serious cases, requiring ventilator, is also not very high; that itself speaks volumes about how well we are managing.
nNEW DELHI: India’s recovery rate for coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patients has reached 48.20%, with a total of 4,611 positive cases having been cured in the past 24 hours, according to data released on Saturday by the Union health ministry. The recovery rate has nearly doubled from 24.5% on April 29.
“Our recovery rate has been moving up steadily. The number of serious cases, requiring ventilator, is also not very high in the country; that itself speaks volumes about how well we are managing the disease,” said a senior health ministry official, requesting anonymity.
India has 115,942 active Covid-19 cases currently, and all are under active medical supervision.
“This is a good sign that people are getting better and our mortality is low. Most positive cases do not require hospitalization, and
SENIOR OFFICIAL, Health ministry
those needing intensive care is actually a minuscule number,” said Dr Rommel Tickoo, senior consultant in the department of internal medicine at Max Healthcare. “Most people in hospitals have moderate disease with good chances of recovery. The need is to take care of our old and vulnerable population with co-morbidities that is at high risk of developing severe illness.”
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has r ramped up the testing capacity for Covid-19. The number of government testing labs has increased to 520, and the number of private labs testing for Covid to 222 across the country from about 100 at the start of March.
In the past 24 hours, 137,938 samples were tested for Covid-19, taking the total number of samples tested to 4,524,317 since January 22 when the first test was conducted at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune.
“We have a target of increasing our (daily) testing capacity to 2 lakh by end of June, and we are well on the path to achieve this. The testing capacity has been ramped up in no time and many more labs have been identified and are in the process of being approved for Covid testing,” said Dr Rajnikant Srivastava, a spokesperson for ICMR.
Covid-related health infrastructure has also been strengthened with the availability of 957 dedicated Covid hospitals with 166,460 isolation beds, 21,473 intensive care unit (ICU) beds and 72,497 beds with oxygen support. India has 2,362 dedicated Covid-19 health centres with 132,593 isolation beds; 10,903 ICU beds and 45,562 oxygen-supported beds. There are 11,210 quarantine centres and 7,529 Covid care centres with 703,786 beds in the country. So far, the Centre has also provided 12.84 million N95 masks and 10.47 million personal protective equipment (PPE) kits to the states and central institutions.
As India eases lockdown restrictions, the health ministry has also released detailed standard operating procedures (SOPS) for public and semi-public premises where Covid-19 has a higher chance of spreading such as shopping malls, food courts, hotels and restaurants, places of worship and offices.
“The new guidelines aim to instil Covid appropriate behaviour to contain the chain of transmission while allowing social and economic activity to resume,” the health ministry said in a statement.
Madhya Pradesh
9,228
Dadar & Nagar Haveli
14
Chhattisgarh
921 58
Maharashtra
82,968 2,739
Telangana
3,496 206 1,710
Goa
267 71 65
Karnataka
5,213 2 232 6,108 1 269