The Central government on Tuesday informed that India has “one of the lowest fatality rate in the world” at 2.82 per cent even as the country maintained the spike with 8,171 new Coronavirus cases and 204 deaths in 24 hours.

With this, the total number of infections has risen to 1,98,706 and the death toll stands at 5,598, according to the latest update by the health ministry.

Advertisement

Maharashtra continues to be the worst-affected state, with 70,013 cases and 2,362 deaths. This is followed by Tamil Nadu, which has 23,495 cases and 184 deaths, and Delhi, with 20,834 cases and 523 deaths.

Briefing media on the Coronavirus situation in the country, Union health ministry joint secretary Lav Agarwal said that “10 per cent of India’s population accounts for 50 per cent of India’s COVID-19 linked deaths.

73 per cent of Coronavirus deaths in India are people with co-morbidities, he added.

The health ministry official further said that India’s recovery rate is now at 48.07 per cent with 95,527 COVID-19 patients having recovered so far.

Agarwal said that the Centre has asked all states to analyse the trajectory of the cases in their respective areas.

“If a state thinks that it needs to set up temporary Coronavirus care centres, then it must do so,” he added.

Meanwhile, the ICMR has said that “indigenous platforms” are being used too for “ramping up COVID-19 testing capacity”.

“Truenat screening and confirmatory tests have now been validated. Outreach of testing has hence been increased since this is available in primary health centres and districts,” said Nivedita Gupta of the ICMR.

“Indian RNA extraction kits are now available in good number, RT-PCR kits by 11-12 indigenous vendors are now being used, we are now in a comfortable position with respect to ttesting, due to identification and hand-holding of domestic players,” she added.

As of June 1, the ICMR has approved 681 laboratories for conducting COVID-19 tests – 476 in Government sector and 205 in private sector. A total of 1,20,000 tests are conducted daily.

The ICMR has further called for the need to understand the extent of the disease instead of saying ‘community transmission’, while adding that India is far from attaining a peak.

“Instead of the use of the word ‘community transmission’, we need to understand the extent of the spread of the disease. We are far from the peak. Our measures to curtail the disease are effective. India has been very good in the reduction in mortality.”

Cases in India spiked at a record rate during lockdown 4.0 that allowed much relaxations.

On June 1, the Centre’s ‘Unlockdown’ strategy came into effect. The lockdown 5.0 is now limited only to containment zones for a month till June 30 and states are allowed to resume normal life outside containment zones.