India has achieved another grim milestone in terms of the number of Covid-19 fatalities. The country is already recording over 50,000 daily cases (the number stood at 55,078 on Friday) which has taken the countrywide tally to over 1.6 million (16,38,870 to be exact).
Another 779 deaths in the last 24 hours took the number of fatalities in India to 35,747. It has now replaced Italy to reach at the fifth place in terms of the number of fatalities, according to World Health Organisation (WHO).
The countries ahead of India are the United States (1,48,640 fatalities), Brazil (88,539 fatalities), the United Kingdom (45,961 fatalities) and Mexico (44,876 fatalities), according to WHO data.
Though the number of Covid-19 cases are high in India, it has conducted over six lakh tests in the last 24 hours, according to Union health ministry. “India achieves another landmark. More than 6 lakh tests done in 24 hours,” the Ministry tweeted on Friday morning.
The ministry further said that it will continue to implement the strategy of comprehensive testing, tracking and treatment to effectively tackle the pandemic. “The objective is to raise the testing capacity to 10 lakhs tests per day in the medium term,” the health ministry said in its subsequent tweet.
The recoveries too have increased in the country. The number of recovered patient crossed the one million-mark on Thursday and is now 1.9 times the total active cases.
According to the health ministry, the fatality rate in the country has dropped to 2.21 per cent.
Addressing a press briefing, Officer on Special Duty in the Health Ministry Rajesh Bhushan said on Thursday that 21 states and union territories have case positivity rate less than 10 per cent, while in four it is less than five per cent.
Bhushan said the ‘test, track and treat’ strategy has shown good results in terms of managing the situation by curbing the spread of infections and keeping the mortality low.
To date, more than 17.2 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 671,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
