New Delhi: After being under fire for the decrease in week-on-week testing numbers, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the country’s top medical research body, registered an all-time high of almost 15 lakh tests in the past 24 hours.
This pushed the positivity rate within touching distance of the 5 per cent target. However, questions about the consistency regarding daily tests continue to linger.
R value
For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, the R value in India, which measures how many people one infected person is likely to spread a disease to, has fallen below 1. While this is good news, one worrying factor is that the value was recorded in the past week, when the testing numbers were low.
Active cases
There are, currently, a little less than 10 lakh active cases in the country — and this is the base on which the pandemic will grow in the coming days. This is also the number that the existing medical infrastructure has to take care of.
Number of deaths
In the last 24 hours, 1,141 people succumbed to Covid-19, bringing the total to 92,290. The case fatality rate (CFR) has been steady at 1.59 per cent for some time now, which is about half of the global Covid fatality rate. India has seen about 67 deaths per million population.
Mortality rate
The case fatality rates of about eight states and Union Territories — Punjab, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Puducherry, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu — are still above the national average of 1.59 per cent. States with a CFR of less than 1 include big states like Assam, Odisha, Kerala, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.
Daily testing
With 14,92,409 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, the cumulative tests have touched nearly 7 crore (6,89,28,440). The last one crore tests were conducted in merely nine days.
Positivity rate
Of the total samples tested in the last 24 hours, just 5.7 per cent were positive. This is the lowest the positivity rate has been in the last four months and is a level that India would want to maintain to build on the gains of the R value finally falling below 1.
Recovered cases
More than three-quarters of the total caseload in India comprises of recovered cases. While this is a positive thing, many hospitals, including AIIMS in New Delhi, are dealing with the complications arising in recovered Covid patients.
Total cases
The total number of cases reported in the country till date is 58,18,570. Of these, 86,052 cases were reported in the last 24 hours. So far, India has reported about 4,207 cases per million population, which is among the lowest in the world.
High burden states
Maharashtra reported 19,164 cases in the last 24 hours, along with 484 deaths. The state’s total Covid tally stands at 12,82,963 — the highest in the country. It also shares a little less than a quarter of the total disease burden in India.
Of Andhra Pradesh’s total case tally of 6,54,385, 7,855 cases and 52 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours. It has the second-highest disease burden in the country, which is rapidly rising with a growth rate of 1.21 per cent.
Karnataka has had some of the most high-profile Covid patients — including Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, former chief minister Siddaramaiah and several other ministers. Union Minister Suresh Angadi, who recently succumbed to the disease, was also from the state. Karnataka currently has a total of 5,48,557 cases.
Tamil Nadu’s total number of active cases has been a little over 46,000 for a few days now. This is good news at this stage of the pandemic, especially when all other states are recording exponential growths in active cases. The state has a total of 5,63,691 cases.
Uttar Pradesh may be the newest entrant in the list of high burden states but it still has a relatively high case load. Furthermore, several questions are emerging on the state’s breakup of tests and the number of RT-PCR tests it is conducting. The state has a total of 61,300 active cases
Tests and positive cases
There are huge discrepancies in the testing numbers of the five high burden states but what this graph does not show is that almost all of the 88,784 tests that Tamil Nadu conducted in the last 24 hours were RT-PCR tests. No other state in the country is banking so heavily on the gold standard test.