On a day when the total number of people who have recovered from the coronavirus disease crossed the number of active cases in India, experts said that the data is as per global trends.
“This should provide hope to the people of India at large who are having a mortal fear of the disease. But then this should not make them complacent and people should follow social distancing and sanitization guidelines,” Dr Neeraj Gupta, professor in the Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, told news agency PTI.
Dr Gupta also said that 80 per cent are likely to have mild disease and make 100 per cent recovery.
The number of active cases in the country stands at 1,33,632, while 1,35,205 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, according to the Union health ministry..
“Thus, 48.9 per cent of the patients have recovered so far,” an official said.
In the last week, an average of 4,529 new active cases have been added to the national tally every day, while 5,397 patients have recovered daily. If these trajectories continue, this gap is likely to widen in the coming days.
One of key factors for the number of recoveries catching up to active cases has been India’s low case fatality rate (CFR). Since 2.8 per cent of infected people have died so far, the number of active cases (calculated by subtracting the number of recovered patients and deaths from the total tally) has been steadily dropping, particularly from the end of May.
Active cases outnumbered the total recovered patients throughout the outbreak until Tuesday – the gap peaking on May 11, when active cases had a 23,511-case lead – according to Hindustan Times’ Covid-19 dashboard.
Recoveries soon picked up pace as patients, particularly the 155,668 new cases reported through May, started getting discharged. On May 29, India reported 11,707 new recoveries (highest in a single day so far), helped by Maharashtra that discharged 8,381 asymptomatic patients in one day.
Meanwhile, India reported 9,985 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday as the total count of cases crossed over 2.76 lakh with 279 deaths reported in the last 24 hours.
The surge in cases over the last few days has prompted the Union health ministry to send central teams to assist state health officials in reviewing the public health measures being undertaken to combat Covid-19 in six cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Bengaluru which are among the major contributors to India’s rising tally of coronavirus infections.
These teams will provide technical support and handhold the state health departments and municipal health officials for reviewing public health measures implemented for containment and management of COVID-19 outbreak in the six cities, the Union health ministry said.
