On the 19th of August, India recorded 64,531 cases of the Novel Coronavirus, taking the total to 27,67,274 cases.
Meanwhile, death cases reached 52,889 deaths including 1,092 reported in the last 24 hours.
In India there are 27,67,274 positive cases, of which 6,76,514 are active cases,20,37,871 recovered/discharged and 51,797 death cases till the 19th of August.
The data of the COVID-19 cases of India has been confirmed by the Union Health Ministry and was also updated on the official website of the Ministry of Home and Family Welfare (MoHFW.)
On the 18th of August, the Health Secretary of India Rajesh Bhushan, addressed the media and briefed about the ongoing situation of COVID-19 infection in India.
The Health Secretary said, “The daily new cases from 13 August are down from over 64,000 to 55,079 now. There is a declining trend. But five days are a short span in the context of a pandemic and there is no room for laxity on containment, testing and surveillance.”
He further added, “Absolute deaths have also declined during the same period. These two parameters do give us some satisfaction but there is no reason for us to slacken our guard.”
According to the released bulletin, active cases are just 25% of the total cases, whereas, the recovery rate is approximately 73.08 % with 1.92 % mortality rate.
Rajesh Bhushan said, “The daily case fatality rate has reduced to 1.92 % and the weekly average fatality rate is 1.94 %. Both are below two percent. ”
Speaking about the reason behind such development in recoveries and treatment, Rajesh Bhushan said, “All these results are because we are conducting a very high number of tests every day using both RT-PCR and rapid antigen tests. Both the tests have a role to play. Through a high number of testing we are able to identify the cases fast… When cases are identified early they can be taken to hospitals early. Because of all that the recovery rate is also rising.” He further added, “If we look at the week wise trend of testing of COVID-19, we will find that in the first week of July ( 1 to 7 July) nearly 2,30,751 tests were conducted and now that number has increased to 8,08,488 (12 to 18 August) and in the last 24 hours, we conducted a record number of tests at 8,99,864.”
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in the past 24 hours, India conducted 8,99,864 tests for the Novel Coronavirus, taking the total to 3,17,42,782.
On the other hand, the majority of cases were reported from ten states. The states reported the highest number of cases are Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, Bihar, Telangana and Gujarat.
Stay tuned for further updates.
