New Delhi: With 95,735 cases reported in the last 24 hours, the number of daily positive cases is now inching towards the 1 lakh mark, putting pressure on the positivity rate.
Soon, over 10 lakh daily tests will not be enough to keep the positivity rate below 10 per cent, if past trends are anything to go by. The deaths are rising everyday too, of the total deaths in the past 24 hours, 69 per cent are concentrated in five states and Union Territories. These are Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh.
R value
Even as the number of daily positive cases inches towards the dreaded 1 lakh mark, the R value — a measure of the rate of transmission of the virus — has not changed in the past week. It measures the number of people each infected person is expected to pass on the virus to.
Active cases
A total of 95,735 new cases have been reported in the last 24 hours in the country and 60 per cent of these cases were reported from just five states. Maharashtra alone has contributed to more than 23,000 cases and Andhra Pradesh has contributed more than 10,000 cases. The total number of active cases in the country stands at 9,19,018 Wednesday.
Number of Deaths
In the past 24 hours, the country registered 1,172 deaths and 62 per cent of these were concentrated in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh. Maharashtra, with 380 deaths, reported 32 per cent of the total deaths followed by Karnataka with 128 deaths and Tamil Nadu with 78 fatalities.
Mortality rates
Punjab’s case fatality rate, which is the highest in the country, continues to rise unabated — contrary to the national trend. Apart from Punjab, the states where the case fatality rate (CFR) is above the national average are Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir.
Daily tests
While the daily tests have remained above 10 lakh for some time now — with the exception of weekends — there is little clarity on what percentage of these are antigen tests. The Union health ministry and ICMR have jointly written to all states and Union Territories, urging them to ensure that all symptomatic negative cases of antigen tests should be mandatorily retested using the RT-PCR test.
Positivity rate
The rising number of positive cases are putting pressure on the positivity rate which seems to be on an upward trend once again. This is a signal that India may need to push its testing numbers up even further.
Recovered cases
More than 34 lakh patients have recovered in India, with 72,939 people having been discharged in the last 24 hours alone. This means that over three-fourth of the total disease burden in the country is made up of recovered patients
Total cases
India is the second worst-affected country in the world and has so far reported 44,65,863 cases, since the first case came to India from Wuhan on 30 January. It also seems to be growing the fastest.
High burden states
Maharashtra has recorded 23,577 cases and 383 deaths in the last 24 hours — and its numbers continue to rise without any respite. The total number of cases now stands at 9,67,349, which means a little less than one-fourth of India’s total cases have been reported from the state
In Andhra Pradesh, the total number of cases stands at 5,27,512. Of these, 10,418 cases and 74 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours. The case fatality rate stands at 0.88 per cent.
Karnataka was once among the better states but now it seems to be doing far worse than others with six of the 15 emerging hotspot districts located there. The total number of cases in the state currently stands at 4,21,730.
Uttar Pradesh may be the newest entrant in the top five worst-states list with a total of 2,85,041 cases — but it has also been on the list for a while now. In the last 24 hours, the state reported 6,568 cases and 65 deaths.
Tamil Nadu’s total number of cases stands at a formidable 4,80,524 but only 10 per cent of these are active cases, which is good news. The CFR is at 1.68 per cent.
Tests and positive cases
Uttar Pradesh continues to test a very large number of samples every day — 1,44,360 in the last 24 hours — and reported a very low daily positivity rate of 4.5 per cent, against a recommended level of 5 per cent.
No other state can match that even though the testing numbers have gone up in almost every state in the country. Madhya Pradesh has done the lowest tests per million population at 18,603 — which is almost half of the national average