India has seen a reduction in the rate at which cases of coronavirus have been doubling, the Centre said on Friday. While prior to the lockdown, the number of cases was doubling every three days, in the past seven days, the doubling rate has dropped to 6.2 days, officials of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare told the media on Thursday.
“This is a product of how we are managing the situation on the ground. We have to maintain vigil to reduce growth rate further,” Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said.
In 19 states and union territories across the country, the doubling rate is lower than the national average. These include Kerala, Uttarakhand, Ladakh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Puducherry, Bihar, Odisha, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, and Tripura.
The ministry also noted that the country’s average growth factor has reduced between mid-March and early April. Between March 15 and March 31, the growth factor of COVID-19 cases was an average of 2.1. That number has dropped by 40% to 1.2 from April 1 onwards, which is also when India had increased the number of samples being tested to include those of patients with SARI (severe acute respiratory illness) and ILI (influenza-like illness) patients.
India currently has over 13,500 cases, with over 1,700 recoveries and 437 deaths. Lav Agarwal added that a look at the numbers show that the recovery rate in India has been 13.6%.
“We have also calculated the outcome ration, which is recovered cases vs cases of death. In India, around 80% of total cases are recovering and 20% of the cases are deaths. We're doing better than other countries of the world. We are trying to improve this ratio,” Lav Agarwal stated.