New Delhi: May 26, 2020. India’s recovery rate has improved to 41.61 per cent while the fatality rate remained the lowest in the world at 2.87 per cent now, said the Ministry of Health Tuesday. Addressing a routine daily briefing on coronavirus, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Aggarwal said that 4.4 deaths per lakh population have been reported for the world, while India has reported about 0.3 deaths per lakh population, which is among the lowest in the world. This has been due to the lockdown, timely identification and management of Covid-19 cases, he added. Follow coronavirus LIVE updates
Meanwhile, India registered 6,535 new cases in the last 24 hours, taking the country’s Covid-19 tally to 1,45,380 on Tuesday. This includes 80,722 patients with the virus, 60,490 who have been treated and discharged and 4,167 deaths. In terms of cases, Assam has emerged as one of India’s fastest-growing states as migrants return to their home towns.
Here are the top points from the health ministry presser:
# India has recorded the lowest fatality rate in the world. India reported 0.3 per cent deaths per lakh population. The main reason for lowest fatility rate is lockdown in India and how India prepared for it: Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary
# Covid-19 fatality rate reduced from 3.3% on April 15 to 2.87% which is among the lowest in the world: Health Ministry.
# 60,490 patients have so far recovered from COVID-19; recovery rate in India continues to improve and is presently 41.61%
# COVID-19 testing scaled up significantly. Over 1.1 lakh samples tested per day at 612 labs: ICMR
#. We don’t know what drug is working or not. A lot of drugs being repurposed for treatment or prophylaxis. Chloroquine in use for 100 yrs. HCQ is even safer: ICMR DG Dr Balram Bhargava
# In vitro studies that show that Hydroxychloroquine has antiviral activity. It was very popular; American government thought so. We also thought it would be useful taking into account availability, biological plausibility etc: ICMR DG
# Observational studies happened in the past few weeks and the data from those and case-control studies show Hydroxychloroquine may be working. We also found there were no major side effects. There was nausea and occasional palpitations: ICMR
# One important thing is Hydroxychloroquine has to be taken with food and we need to do one ECG during use: ICMR DG
# In terms of fatality rate, we have surprisingly found a low fatality rate in India, which is very good. There are several hypothesis on this, but we can’t say anything clearly on any factor. Hope it continues: Dr Balram Bhargava, DG, ICMR
# Not taking solace from our figures, comparing with other countries we are not even looking at resource constraints or population density. We are saying is that we have been able to manage it so far but the battle is not over: Lav Agarwal
