New Delhi: For the last two days, India has reported over 90,000 cases per day and the country is now officially in the second spot among high Covid burden countries in the world. The only country with more deaths and cases is the USA.
Even as over 2.5 lakh positives were added to India’s tally in the last three days, the usual weekend dip in testing sent the sample positivity rate spiking to 12.6 per cent — the highest since 9 August.
Active cases
Active cases are a measure of what percentage of patients still need medical supervision and are in an infectious state, i.e., can spread the disease to others.
The five states featured here are also the ones that currently have the most number of active cases. Maharashtra contributed 26.76 per cent of the active cases in the country, followed by Andhra Pradesh at 11.30 per cent, Karnataka at 11.25 per cent, Uttar Pradesh at 6.98 per cent and Tamil Nadu at 5.83 per cent. These five states presently contribute 62 per cent of total active cases.
Number of deaths
Having reported over 1,000 deaths every day all of this month, India’s total death toll because of Covid currently stands at 71,642. The case fatality rate (CFR) though is on a steady decline thanks to a huge increase in new cases in the recent days. CFR stands at a new low of 1.70 per cent today, but the absolute numbers continue to look grim on a daily basis.
Mortality rate
The case fatality rates in both Maharashtra and Gujarat have finally fallen below three. Now, Punjab and Maharashtra are now jointly at number two.
Daily tests
After having tested over 10 lakh samples six days in a row, the weekend bug has hit again, pushing testing numbers down to 7,20,362 in the last 24 hours. Many states are doing more antigen tests than RT-PCR tests as they find these “easier” while some others are yet to utilise their full capacity for RT-PCR testing, health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said during last week’s Covid-19 briefing.
Positivity rate
The huge increase in daily positives and the weekend dip in testing has sent the positivity rate spiking again. At 12.6 per cent, the positivity recorded in the last 24 hours is the highest India has recorded since 9 August when the sample positivity rate rose to 13 per cent. That too had been the result of a weekend dip in testing. India is trying to bring its positivity rate down to 5 per cent.
Recovered cases
India’s total recovered cases have crossed 32.5 lakh today, with 69,564 patients being discharged in the last 24 hours. This has resulted in the recovery rate touching 77.31 per cent. Various calibrated and focussed actions undertaken within the umbrella strategy of ‘test, track and treat’ have enabled early identification of cases through aggressive and wide scale testing, the health ministry said in a statement.
Total cases
In the last three days, India has reported over 2.5 lakh cases — 86,432 fresh cases Saturday, 90,632 on Sunday and 90,802 by Monday morning. This has taken India’s total past that of Brazil to 42,04,613. The country now has the second highest Covid burden in the world, with only the US being ahead in both total cases and total deaths.
Five states are contributing 60 per cent of total cases with Maharashtra at the top (21.6 per cent), followed by Andhra Pradesh (11.8 per cent), Tamil Nadu (11.0 per cent), Karnataka (9.5 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (6.3 per cent).
High burden states
Tamil Nadu — one of India’s first major hotspots and still among the top five high burden states — has slipped to the fifth position in terms of the active cases due to rapid rise in other states. The state has so far reported 4,63,480 cases.
Maharashtra continues to be the leader with 9,07,212 cases reported so far, of which 23,350 cases and 328 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours. The case fatality rate though dropped below 3 per cent for the first time in many months.
Karnataka is currently in the third place among the top five states. In the last 24 hours, it reported 9,319 fresh cases and 95 deaths taking its total tally to 3,98,551. The case fatality rate is marginally below the national average at 1.61 per cent.
Andhra Pradesh is now in second place among the high burden states, having reported a total of 4,98,125 cases. Of these, 10,794 cases and 70 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours. The case fatality rate continues to be less than one.
Uttar Pradesh is currently in fourth place in terms of active cases, with 61,625 of its 2,66,283 cases being under medical supervision. UP reported 6,518 cases and 77 deaths in the last 24 hours. The case fatality rate stands at 1.47 per cent.
Tests and positive cases
In the last 24 hours, Uttar Pradesh tested 1,55,946 samples, of which less than 7,000 came back positive while in Maharashtra almost 50 per cent of its 56,472 tests were positive.
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