New Delhi: For a second time this week, the number of new novel coronavirus cases fell under 30,000 Friday. The test positivity rate also improved to 3.3 per cent. A test positivity rate under 10 per cent is considered an indication that a country is carrying out sufficient tests.
India’s overall active case numbers have declined. But Chhattisgarh is seeing an increase in its active case numbers, as a result of which it now finds itself among the top five states with the highest active cases.
R value
The effective reproduction number (R), which is a measure of how fast an infection spreads, has fallen to 0.91 in India this week. R needs to remain under 1 for a sustained period of time for an epidemic to come to an end.
Daily cases
On Friday, as many as 29,398 people tested positive for Covid-19 across the country. It is the second time this week that the number of daily cases has remained below 30,000.
Active cases
The active Covid-19 cases in the country declined to 3,63,749 Friday. This accounts for 3.71 per cent of the total cases detected in India since the beginning of the pandemic.
Number of deaths
In the past 24 hours, 414 Covid deaths were reported from across the country. As many as 1,42,186 people have died in India due to Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Mortality rate
Punjab’s case fatality rate (CFR) continues to be at 3.15 — the highest in the country. However, the number of active cases in the state has declined to under 8,000.
Maharashtra and Sikkim also have high CFR of 2.56 and 2.23 respectively. Both states are seeing a decline in their CFR.
Kerala, which despite having a high number of cases, has a low CFR of 0.38. India’s overall case fatality rate is 1.45 now.
Daily tests
The number of tests conducted over the last 24 hours in the country fell to 8,72,497. A total of 1,191 government and 1,038 private laboratories are currently sending test report data to the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 15,16,32,223 Covid-19 tests have been carried out.
Positivity rate
The test positivity rate (TPR) reduced to 3.3 per cent Friday. The overall TPR for India, calculated since the beginning of the pandemic, is now 6.4 per cent.
Recovered cases
In the last 24 hours, 37,528 Covid-19 patients were discharged across India.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 92,90,834 people have recovered from the Covid-19 illness across the country. India has the highest number of Covid-19 recoveries in the world.
Total cases
A total of 97,96,769 people have been infected with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. India has had the second largest number of coronavirus cases in the world, second only to the US.
States with the highest active cases
Maharashtra continued to have the highest number of active cases in the country. On Friday, 73,001 active cases were recorded.
In the last 24 hours, 3,824 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the state, bringing the state’s total number of cases to 18,68,172. Of these, 1,42,186 people have died, with 70 Covid-19 deaths reported in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra has been reporting the highest number of daily deaths in the country for the past several weeks.
Kerala, which has the second highest number of active cases, saw a decline in its active caseload to 59,663, as of Friday. In the last 24 hours, 4,470 people tested positive for the disease — which is the highest number of new cases among states with the most number of active cases.
In the last 24 hours, the state reported 26 deaths, which brought the total Covid-19 toll of the state to 2,533. A total of 6,54,041 people in the state have so far been infected with Covid-19.
The active caseload in West Bengal reduced to 23,451 Friday. The state has so far had 5,13,752 confirmed cases of Covid-19, of which 2,801 cases were detected in the last 24 hours.
The state has so far had 8,916 Covid-19 deaths, of which 49 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
Uttar Pradesh now has the fourth highest number of active Covid-19 cases. As of Friday, the state’s active case load stood at 20,801. As many as 1,662 people tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, while 24 people have died.
The total number of cases detected in the state so far stood at 5,61,161. Of these, 8,011 people have died.
Chhattisgarh has seen a sustained increase in the number of Covid-19 cases, pushing it to the top five states with the highest number of active cases.
So far, 2,52,638 people have been infected with Covid-19 in the state, of which 19,346 cases are currently active, while 3,054 people have died.
In the last 24 hours, 1,518 people tested positive for the disease, while 16 people lost their lives.
Subscribe to our channels on YouTube & Telegram
Why news media is in crisis & How you can fix it
India needs free, fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism even more as it faces multiple crises.
But the news media is in a crisis of its own. There have been brutal layoffs and pay-cuts. The best of journalism is shrinking, yielding to crude prime-time spectacle.
ThePrint has the finest young reporters, columnists and editors working for it. Sustaining journalism of this quality needs smart and thinking people like you to pay for it. Whether you live in India or overseas, you can do it here.