Doubling rate of Covid-19 cases reducing, announces Health Ministry

Almost 80 per cent of Covid-19 patients in India (1,749 people) have recovered, while as many as 19 states and Union Territories have a doubling rate (of cases) lower than the national level. This bit of positive news was announced by Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health, late Friday afternoon.

While maintaining that India has fared a lot better than many other countries in the fight against coronavirus pandemic, the government gave some interesting stats which could bring some respite in these gloomy times. "Before lockdown, doubling rate of coronavirus cases was about three days. But, according to data from the past one week, the doubling rate of cases now stands at 6.2 days. Doubling rate in 19 states, Union Territories is even lower than average doubling rate," said Agarwal.

While the entire country remains in lockdown, many areas identified as hotspots even sealed completely, the spread of the deadly virus being curtailed to a certain extent is a positive development for the agencies. The doubling rate is lower than the national level in 19 states and UTs, namely Kerala, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Ladakh, Puducherry, Delhi, Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Assam, and Tripura.

"We have been witnessing average growth factor at 1.2 since April 1 which stood at 2.1 (average) between March 15-31. Hence, there is 40 per cent decline in average growth factor even as we increased the Covid-19 testings," revealed Agrawal.

As per the Health Ministry, the ratio between recovered Covid-19 patients and deaths stands at 80:20 in India which is higher than that in several other counties.

There are currently 1,919 hospitals in India dedicated completely to the treatment of coronavirus patients, having over 173,000 isolation and over 21,000 ICU beds.

As many as 1,007 new coronavirus cases and 23 deaths were reported in the country between Thursday and Friday afternoon.

"All our actions are focused on speeding up vaccine development. We are working on recombinant BCG, convalescent plasma therapy, monoclonal antibodies to fight coronavirus. We are aiming to make 10 lakh RTPCR kits by the month of May indigenously," said Agrawal..