New Delhi: Testing numbers returning to their usual weekday levels combined with a sharp fall in daily positive cases, brought the positivity rate down significantly. However, the Covid numbers in states continue to be divergent. For instance, while Maharashtra’s cases have reduced, so has testing in the state.
Active cases
Recovered cases now exceed active cases (9,47,576) by more than 41.5 lakh (41,53,831). The recovered cases are 5.38 times more than active cases and are consistently rising. The active caseload of the country presently is merely 15.42 per cent of the total positive cases and is consistently declining.
Number of deaths
There have been 776 deaths in the past 24 hours taking the total to 96,318. Ten states and Union Territories account for 78 per cent of the deaths that occurred in the past day. Maharashtra reported more than 23 per cent of the new deaths with 180 fatalities followed by Tamil Nadu with 70 deaths.
Mortality rate
Death rates vary widely across the country. Jammu and Kashmir’s mortality rate is currently at the same level as the national average of 1.57 per cent. Twenty five states and Union Territories have death rates lower than the national level while eight are still higher.
Daily testing
Testing returned to the usual levels with 11,42,811 tests conducted in the last 24 hours. These include both RT-PCR and antigen tests, and different states are carrying out different percentages of these tests. The Central government, however, has insisted that all symptomatic patients who tested negative in an antigen test have to be retested with an RT-PCR.
Positivity rate
The significant fall in daily positives and the rise in testing brought the sample positivity rate down to 6.1 per cent. For the last several weeks, the positivity has fallen to the 6 per cent level about once a week but this drop has not sustained.
Recovered cases
India’s recovery rate crossed 83 per cent today. In the last 24 hours, 84,877 recoveries have been registered while the number of new confirmed cases stands at 70,589. The total number of recoveries has touched 51,01,397.
Total cases
A total of 70,589 new cases have been reported in the last 24 hours in the country. Ten states and Union Territories account for 73 per cent of the new confirmed cases. Maharashtra continues to lead this tally with more than 11,000 new cases followed by Karnataka with more than 6,000 cases.
High burden states
Uttar Pradesh has recorded 3,790 cases in the last 24 hours. It has a total of 3,90,875 cases of which 53,953 are active cases. There were 58 deaths and 5,382 recoveries in the same period.
Andhra Pradesh with a total of 6,81,161 cases currently has the second-highest disease burden in the country. However, despite seeing 5,487 new cases in the last 24 hours, it has recorded only 37 deaths. The state’s mortality rate, at 0.84 per cent, is half of the national average.
While Maharashtra’s disease burden continues to be large, the number of fresh cases and deaths in the last 24 hours have come down a little with 11,921 new cases and 184 deaths. The doubling time now is almost 51 days.
Karnataka has recorded 6,892 cases and 59 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 5,82,458. This includes 8,641 deaths but the CFR of the state is lower than the national average. It has been asked to ram up testing.
Tamil Nadu’s active cases have hovered around the 46,000-mark for some time now. The state has also now reopened the Koyambedu market which was the epicentre when the pandemic first began. The state’s CFR is marginally higher.
Testing and positive cases
Uttar Pradesh’s positivity rate is on a steady decline — it was 2.4 per cent in the last 24 hours even as the state tested increased testing to over 1.5 lakh samples. However, Maharashtra and Karnataka have not ramped up testing, as they were asked to do.