New Delhi: A day after India’s test positivity rate fell to a four-month low of 5.1 per cent, the metric once again rose to 5.5 per cent along with an increase in the number of new cases and deaths in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, even as India’s overall case fatality rate is decreasing, it has been steadily increasing in Punjab. The state has the highest CFR in the country.
Active cases
The number of active cases saw a significant dip Wednesday, reducing to 8,26,876. The active case count in India has been on a decline for over three weeks now. Of the new cases, 77 per cent are from 10 states and Union Territories. Kerala has outnumbered Maharashtra with the highest number of new reported cases.
The top three contributing states are Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka, with more than 8,000 cases each, followed by Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh — both contributed more than 4,000 cases each.
Number of deaths
In the last 24 hours, India has registered 730 Covid deaths, a slight increase from Tuesday. The number of deaths per day has been declining for over a week, and Tuesday recorded the lowest number of deaths in 24 hours (706) since 27 July.
The total number of reported deaths from Covid-19 in India now stands at 1,10,586. Of these, nearly 80 per cent are concentrated in 10 states and Union Territories. More than 25 per cent of the new fatalities are from Maharashtra (187 deaths).
Mortality rate
Punjab, which has the highest case fatality rate in the country, is seeing a steady increase in this metric. It increased from 3.05 last week to 3.11 today. Maharashtra and Gujarat continue reporting high CFR — 2.64 and 2.33, respectively.
Kerala, the state which has the third highest number of active case, has a very low CFR of 0.34. Last week, Kerala’s CFR was 0.36. The overall CFR for India is now about 1.53.
Daily tests
A total of 11,45,015 tests were conducted in the 1,935 testing labs in the country, including 1,101 government and 768 private labs in the past 24 hours. The total number of tests done till date stands at 9,00,90,122.
Positivity rate
The test positivity rate increased to 5.5 per cent in the last 24 hours. This comes a day after the TPR fell to its lowest value since June. The overall test positivity rate, calculated since the beginning of the pandemic, is 8 per cent.
Recovered cases
A total of 74,632 Covid-19 patients have been discharged in the last 24 hours, which brings the recovery rate to about 87.05 per cent, a slight increase from 86.78 per cent yesterday. Of these, 79 per cent new recovered cases were concentrated in 10 states and Union Territories — Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Delhi.
As many as 63,01,927 patients have recovered from the infection in India over the course of the pandemic, which is the highest number of recoveries in the world.
Total cases
India, so far, has recorded a total of 72,39,389 cases of Covid-19. A total of 63,509 new cases have been reported in the last 24 hours in the country.
High-burden states
In Maharashtra, the total number of Covid-19 cases stand at 15,43,837 with 8,522 new cases registered in the last 24 hours. The state has seen 40,701 deaths so far, with 187 deaths in the last 24 hours. The state has the highest number of active cases at 2,05,884.
Karnataka is the state with the second highest burden of active cases. Over the last 24 hours, the state saw 8,191 fresh cases, bringing the total number of cases in the state to 7,26,106. Of these, 1,13,478 are active cases. As many as 87 people have died from Covid in the last 24 hours in Karnataka, bringing the total death toll to 10,123.
Tamil Nadu has 43,239 active Covid-19 cases in total, with 4,666 new cases and 57 deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Tamil Nadu so far is 6,65,930 and 10,371 people have died in the state.
Andhra Pradesh reported 4,622 new cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases to 7,63,573. With 35 Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, the state’s death toll now stands at 6,291.
Uttar Pradesh reported 3,033 new cases and 28 deaths in the last 24 hours. The state currently has 38,082 active cases, while the total number of confirmed cases in the state so far stands at 4,42,118. The state’s death toll stands at 6,466.
Tests and positive cases
Maharashtra’s test positivity rate reduced to 10.5 per cent today. This is an improvement over the past week when TPR was above 15 per cent. A TPR of above 10 per cent indicates that the state is not conducting enough tests.
Uttar Pradesh conducted over 1.51 lakh tests and reported 3,033 positive cases — which reduced its test positivity rate to 2 per cent.