New Delhi: India’s daily positive cases are inching closer to the one-lakh mark and that testing is beginning to fall short is evident from the positivity rate of 9.5 per cent. Maharashtra, however, continues to have a positivity rate of 28 per cent which is why the state has been asked to ramp up testing.
Even the deaths per million metric and the daily assertions about how low that is cannot take away the fact that over 1,000 people have died every single day in September.
R value
The effective reproduction number is a value that measures how infectious a virus is. It is a measure of how many people each infected person is likely to spread the disease to. While it has gone down marginally, for a country of India’s size and population density this value could still mean many thousands of cases and deaths every day.
Active cases
In the last 24 hours, 96,424 cases were reported in the country, taking the total active cases above 10 lakh. According to health ministry data, 59.8 per cent of the active cases are concentrated in five states — Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.
Number of deaths
Even as India continues to draw solace from the fact that its deaths per million is one of the lowest in the world, that is more a result of the country’s huge population than any actual success in bringing down mortality. In the last 24 hours, 1,174 people died of the disease, bringing the total to 84,372.
Mortality rate
Punjab, which has been at the bottom of the graph for some time now, is scurrying to arrange for oxygen and ensure that people reach hospitals on time. Currently, eight states have case fatality rate higher than the national average of 1.62 per cent.
Daily tests
The number of Covid-19 tests done in the last 24 hours may look impressive — 10,06,615 — but if India is to keep pace with the rapidly spreading tentacles of the SARS-CoV2 virus, this number may need to go up much more. So far, the country has done 6,15,72,343 tests.
Positivity rate
That India’s testing is beginning to lose pace to the speed at which Covid-19 is spreading is evident from the fact that positivity rate is now dangerously close to 10 per cent. If the test positivity rate breaches that mark, it is an indicator that testing needs to increase.
Recovered cases
Five states — Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh — have contributed to 59.3 per cent of the total recoveries so far. In the last 24 hours, 87,472 active cases have recovered and were discharged from home/facility isolation and hospitals. India has been consistently reporting a very high level of daily recoveries — more than 70,000 since the last 11 days.
Total cases
India currently has 52,14,677 Covid-19 cases in the country, which is the second highest in the world and next only to the United States.
High burden states
Andhra Pradesh currently has 6,01,462 Covid-19 cases with a case fatality rate of 0.86 per cent and a doubling time of close to 45 days. The state has 88,197 active cases.
With 24,619 cases and 470 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, Maharashtra has so far seen 11,45,840 Covid-19 cases and 31,351 deaths.
With 9,366 cases and 93 deaths in the last 24 hours, the total cases in Karnataka now stand at 4,94,356. The state has a doubling time of 26 days and a case fatality rate of 1.55 per cent, which is slightly less than the national average.
With 6,318 cases and 81 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, Uttar Pradesh now has 68,235 active cases, bringing its total to 3,36,294. The doubling time of 35 days is marginally less than the national doubling time.
A total of 5,560 cases in the last 24 hours have taken Tamil Nadu’s total to 5,25,420, though less than 10 per cent of that number are active cases. It also has the highest doubling time — 64 days — among all the high burden states.
Tests and positive cases
Uttar Pradesh is clearly the leader not just in terms of testing, but also its sample positivity rate, which is less than 5 per cent. Maharashtra in comparison has a positivity rate of 28 per cent.
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