Written By: Longjam Dineshwori | Published : June 17, 2020 12:02 PM IST
India has also strengthened testing capacity to 3 lakh samples per day.
The COVID-19 pandemic is getting worse in India, with many states across the country witnessing an exponential increase in the number of people infected by the virus. But at the same time the recovery rate of patients suffering from COVID-19 is also improving.
In a press release issued on Tuesday, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare informed that the recovery rate of patients suffering from COVID-19 has risen to 52.47 per cent in the country. This means more than half of positive cases have recovered from the disease. A day before India's recovery rate was 51.08 per cent, according to the Health Ministry.
So far, a total of 1,86,934 patients have been cured of COVID-19 and there are currently 1,55,227 active cases in India, according to the data on the Union Health Ministry website. "During the last 24 hours, 10,215 COVID-19 patients were cured," said the Ministry said in its release.
"The recovery rate rises to 52.47 per cent, which is indicative of the fact that more than half of positive cases have recovered from the disease," it added.
Health experts around that world have been constantly highlighting the importance of testing, isolation and tracing new cases to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease. As per the Health Ministry, India has ramped up its testing capacity to test up to three lakh samples per day.
The Health Ministry on Tuesday claimed that a total of 59,21,069 samples have been tested for the COVID-19 infection in the country, with as many as 1,54,935 samples tested in the last 24 hours. In a release, the Ministry also informed that the government has set a network of 907 labs in the country, which includes 659 labs in the government sector and 248 in the private sector.
The Ministry noted that Rapid Antigen Detection Test, which takes just 15 minutes to show results, will help in early detection of the disease. It will also make COVID-19 testing more affordable and increase the volume of testing without losing reliability, sensitivity and specificity.
The Rapid Antigen test can be conducted at the site of sample collection in the healthcare setting within one hour of sample collection, it said
Currently, India produces around 10 million antigen test kits in a month, according to the Ministry.
If India do away with the lockdown, coronavirus cases in the country may nearly triple by July 15 to over 800,000 cases. This is a prediction from a team of data scientists at the University of Michigan. This would put India just below Brazil, the world's second worst-hit country at present.
The study, conducted by researchers from an Operations Research Group constituted by ICMR, has also suggested that India may witness the peak stage of COVID-19 pandemic around mid-November. They warned that during the COVID-19 peak India may face shortage of isolation and ICU beds, and ventilators. The researchers noted that the lockdown helped delay the peak of the pandemic by an estimated 34 to 76 days and reduce the number of infections by 69 to 97 per cent.
They suggested that increasing the healthcare infrastructure and coverage of public health measures may help reduce the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.
