The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has said that India is far from the peak of coronavirus spread. It highlighted that timely preventive measures have aided in keeping the cases and fatalities from surging.
Addressing a joint media briefing of the nodal medical body and Ministry of Health on the COVID-19 situation in the country, ICMR expert Dr Nivedita Gupta said that the country was better positioned to tackle the pandemic in comparison to other countries.
‘We are very far away from the peak. Our preventive measures have been very effective. We are in a much better position vis-a-vis other countries and you will see the data soon,’ Dr Gupta said.
‘India has been very good at reducing mortality. You will get to see the data in a week,’ she added.
Answering if the country had entered the third stage of the virus outbreak, Dr Gupta said that instead of using the word ‘community transmission’ attention should rather be paid to understand the extent of the spread of the disease.
‘ICMR has started a sero-survey under which close to 34,000 people will be covered. The results will be in public domain by the end of the week,’ Dr Gupta stated.
During the briefing, Joint secretary to the Union Health Ministry Lav Agarwal said that the COVID-19 fatality rate in India is 2.82%, one of the lowest in the world.
Agarwal said it is wrong to just look at the total number of cases and state that India has the seventh-highest number of cases as the population of countries should also be taken into account.
The official informed that 73% of COVID-19 deaths in the country are in people with co-morbidities (having an underlying health condition).
Agarwal also said that, till now, 95,527 coronavirus patients have recovered across the country. ‘The recovery rate is now 48.07%,’ he added.
The officials also stated that the country is continuously upgrading to contain and curb the coronavirus outbreak and that the COVID-19 testing has been ramped up in the country.
‘Today, we are conducting 1 lakh 20 thousand tests every day,’ Dr Gupta said.
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