New Delhi: The doubling rate for COVID-19 cases has improved to 11 days in the country. The rate was 3.4 days before the lockdown was imposed. The cases of fatality have been recorded at 3.2 per cent, the Union Health Ministry said Thursday.
Official figures
Meanwhile the death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 1,075 and the number of cases climbed Thursday to 33,610.
Time for doubling of COVID-19 cases
Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry Lav Agarwal said the doubling rate of COVID-19 cases in several states is better than the national average. He cited some examples where the doubling rate of COVID-19 cases was found between 11-20 days. The states are Delhi (11.3), Uttar Pradesh (12), Jammu and Kashmir (12.2), Odisha (13), Rajasthan (17.8), Tamil Nadu (19.1) and Punjab (19.5).
Doubling rate of between 20-40 days was seen in some other states. They are Karnataka (21.6), Ladakh (24.2), Haryana (24.4), Uttarakhand (30.3) and Kerala (37.5).
Agarwal however, said that despite the improved overall doubling rate of a state one shouldn’t relax. There can be some districts in it where the cases are doubling at a faster pace.
“Thus, it is important to ensure that we continue to work in a focused manner in the identified hotspot areas,” informed Agarwal.
Fatality rate
The joint secretary said the current case fatality rate for COVID-19 is 3.2 per cent in Ind. Sixty five per cent of the victims are males and 35 per cent females.
Agarwal said the recovery rate for COVID-19 has progressively improved from 13.06 per cent to over 25 per cent in India in the last 14 days. He said some hospitals are hesitating to provide critical services like dialysis, chemotherapy, blood transfusion and institutional delivery to regular patients. This is due to lack of understanding and fear.
“In some cases, they have closed down the clinics while some are insisting for testing before offering those services,” said Agarwal.
Testing facilities ramped up
Agarwal also spoke about testing being scaled up. He informed that the RT-PCR tests are now available in 292 government and 97 private facilities.
Wednesday, 58,686 tests were performed. If you see the average number of tests performed each day in the last five days, it comes to 49,800 tests. It is important to understand that whatever capacity is needed, we have progressively increased it,” said Agarwal. He also said the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is coordinating with the state governments and guiding them on the use of rapid test kits.
“There is a need for awareness among the masses that this test has a very limited utility. Antibody formation takes time and this test is just used to ascertain if antibodies have formed in the body. As far as testing for COVID-19 and the treatment are concerned, the RT-PCR test is to be use,” asserted Agarwal.
PTI