India / Coronavirus recoveries in India cross 24 lakh, death toll surpasses 58,000

New Delhi: India’s tally of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases rose to more than 3.1 million after 60,975 fresh infections and 848 deaths were reported from across the country in the last 24 hours, Union health ministry data showed on Tuesday morning.

According to the health ministry, there are 704,348 active cases and 58,390 people have succumbed to the disease till date. India’s Covid-19 total recoveries crossed 2.4 million as 66,550 patients were discharged between Monday and Tuesday morning.

With this the recovery rate is now at 75.91%, which the government has attributed to “effective implementation of the policy of testing aggressively, tracking comprehensively”.

“Effective clinical management of the patients in the ICUs has been instrumental in keeping the Case Fatality Rate low and on a steady downward trajectory. It has further dipped to 1.85% today,” the ministry said on Monday.

Delhi may be facing a fresh challenge to control an outbreak it had contained to a considerable extent, data has shown. The Covid-19 positivity rate has started rising again in Delhi, with 7.4% of all tests conducted in the last week coming back positive, the highest this number has touched in over a month.

Experts say positivity rate shows how widespread the virus is in the community, and when coupled with an increase in new cases, indicates that the virus is spreading fast.

India has tested more than 3.5 crore people for Covid-19 so far, resolutely following its ‘TEST TRACK TREAT’ strategy, the health ministry also said on Tuesday morning.

However, India’s daily testing for Covid-19 dropped sharply on Sunday, as 609,917 tests were conducted, the lowest in two weeks, according to health ministry data. The daily testing count was around 200,000 fewer than that of the previous day.

Sunday’s was the lowest test count since August 10, when 477,027 tests were conducted. India had conducted its first Covid-19 test on January 23 at the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR’s) National Institute of Virology in Pune and has conducted 3,590,213 tests till date.

Meanwhile, the Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) will start the Phase II human clinical trial of the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine candidate in India from Tuesday. The observer-blind, randomised controlled study to determine the safety and immunogenicity of ‘‘Covishield’‘ on healthy adults will begin at Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College and Hospital in Pune.

Serum Institute has partnered with British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for manufacturing the Covid-19 vaccine candidate, developed by the University of Oxford.