India / Haryana records best COVID-19 recovery rate in India after Delhi

New Delhi: After Delhi, Haryana has emerged as the only state with maximum recovery rate above 80 per cent. While Delhi touched a recovery rate of 89.57 per cent, Haryana recorded the recovery percentage of 81.32 per cent, as on August 2, against a national average of 65.4 per cent. According to state Covid bulletin released on Monday evening, Haryana’s recovery rate showed a further improvement to 81.97 per cent.

Haryana’s fatality rate, as per August 2 data, was (1.18 per cent) — far lower than Delhi (2.91 per cent) against the national fatality rate of 2.11 per cent.

The bordering states of Haryana have a higher fatality rate. While Punjab has a fatality rate of 2.4 per cent, Rajasthan has 1.6 per cent and Uttar Pradesh has 1.9 per cent. Even Union Territory of Chandigarh that is also joint state capital of Punjab and Haryana has a fatality rate of 1.7 per cent, while Himachal Pradesh has 0.5 per cent fatality rate.

The recovery rate of Haryana’s bordering states is also far lower. While Himachal Pradesh has a recovery rate of 57 per cent, Punjab’s recovery rate is 64.9 per cent, Uttar Pradesh 57.6 per cent and Rajasthan has a recovery rate of 70.3 per cent.

According to the figures available on Union government’s website, there were several states that showed an extremely poor recovery rate, a few even below 40 per cent – including Meghalaya (30.21 per cent), Nagaland (31.94 per cent), Andaman & Nicobar (33.14 per cent) and Jharkhand (37.28 per cent).

Haryana’s recovery rate had been on a constant rise during Unlock 1.0. From July 12 onward, Haryana’s recovery rate had been consistently above 75 per cent and increasing.

As on Monday evening, Bhiwani district registered a recovery rate of 95.31 per cent, followed by 89.80 per cent in Gurgaon and 88.38 per cent in Faridabad. The district of Sonipat also recorded 87.73 per cent recovery rate, followed by Jhajjar (87.16 per cent), Ambala (81.75 per cent), Palwal (81.80 per cent), and Nuh (88.47 per cent). A few districts, however, had a lower recovery rate including Panchkula (47.47 per cent) – the lowest across the state.

The state on Monday added another 654 new cases and seven deaths to its Covid toll taking the total number of positive cases to 37,173 and 440 deaths. Among the seven patients who died in the last 24 hours, four died in Panipat, two in Kurukshetra and one in Bhiwani.

For the first time in many days, number of active Covid patients in Faridabad and Gurgaon came below 1,000. While 932 active cases were there in Faridabad, Gurgaon had 825 active patients as on Monday evening.

According to state Covid bulletin, 780 patients had recovered in the state in the last 24 hours taking the total number of recovered patients in the state to 30,470. There were 6,263 active Covid patients in Haryana on Monday.

The state’s testing per million population was 25,955 as on Monday evening, while its case doubling rate reached 26 days.

As far as tests per million population is concerned among the states, Haryana figures among top nine in the country with Goa (92,143) leading, followed by Arunachal Pradesh (64,341), Tripura (49,180), Andhra Pradesh (41,661), Assam (30,908), Sikkim (43,357), Tamil Nadu (38,519), Manipur (33,240), and Haryana (25,491).

Haryana’s Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Rajeev Arora attributes the high recovery rate to “early identification of patients and bringing them to healthcare facilities”.

“Government of Haryana has strictly implemented to MoHFW guidelines pertaining to admission and clinical management. Wherever possible, home isolation is done in case of asymptotic/mild cases. Daily monitoring is being done through control room as well as home visits by health teams. Advance planning of manpower and bed management are done, so that there is sufficient health related infrastructure as well as doctors. Expert group meetings through video-conference are being done to plan for clinical management. We have given tremendous emphasis on keeping fatalities low and recovery high by bringing the patients much earlier to health institutions by better surveillance and monitoring,” he said.

Arora added: “Testing, always, has been focus area for Haryana. Our state is one of leading state in terms of per million tests. The testing is being increased through establishing new labs in government district hospitals as well as in medical colleges. In that way, Haryana will soon have Covid testing capacity to 20,000 per day, including that of private labs. We already have 11 labs in government institutions and six labs in private sector. At least six more labs in government hospitals and four labs in private medical colleges will be operational in next 10 to 15 days taking the total to 17 labs in government sector and 10 labs in private sector. This will be supplemented by Rapid antigen kits . In August, per day testing will be targeted to be 15,000.”

However, among the Union Territories in terms of testing per million population, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu lead with 72,637 tests, followed by Ladakh (72,482), Andaman & Nicobar (64,585), J&K (53,323), Puducherry (33,287). Chandigarh was the poorest with 13,732 tests per million population, as on August 2.