Union Health Ministry has said that continuous decline in daily cases of Covid -19 and further improvement in recovery from infection is being noticed in the country.
Addressing media in New Delhi this evening, Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry Lav Agarwal said that continuous decline in daily cases is being noticed since India reported a peak with nearly four lakh 14 thousand cases on 7th May. He said, now almost 88 per cent decline in such cases has been seen since the highest reported peak in daily new cases.
He said, in the last 24 hours only 51,666 cases of corona infection were reported. Mr Agarwal also informed that till 4th of May, there were 531 districts in the country which were reporting over 100 cases daily, now the number has come down to 125 districts.
The Secretary said, till 10th May there were over 37 lakh active cases in the country and after that a continuous decline in such cases were noticed and now it has come down to the level of 6.13 lakh showing a decline by 83 per cent.
On recovery rate from the infection, Mr Agarwal said that the country is also witnessing a consistent increase in recovery rate. He said, on 3rd May, the overall recovery rate was 81.8 per cent and now it has reached the mark of 96.7 per cent.
He said, currently 17.58 lakh tests of COVID -19 is being conducted on a daily basis as the cases are on a decline. He said, there are currently 565 districts in the country where the case positivity rate is less than 5 per cent.
Mr Agarwal said, till 3 PM today, more than 31 crore 13 lakh vaccine doses have been given to the beneficiaries. Mr Agarwal also appealed to the people not to lower their guard against the virus and follow Covid appropriate behavior strictly.
Secretary Department of Biotechnology, Dr Renu Swarup has informed that the first variant of concern was the one announced by UK where it was identified and subsequently there are now 4 of these variants to which WHO has called Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. During the media briefing she said that Delta variant is the one that was identified in India and in fact Indian scientists who have indentified it and put it on the global data base.
She said as the genomic surveillance was done within India, it also helps many other countries to identify on the global data base and then it was noted that this variant was found in many countries. She said, one more mutation has been noticed in Delta which is Delta Plus which means additional mutation that has come to Delta variant.
Dr Swarup said that we will continue to track it.
She also gave a message that we should not forget that the our public health intervention or covid appropriate behavior which are very important aspect of it does not change even if the variants change.
