India’s Covid Tally Crosses 41 lakh-mark, On Course To Beat Brazil To Second Rank

Healthwire Bureau

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With 90,633 cases, India’s coronavirus tally past 41-lakh mark in the last 24 hours. The total number of cases now stands at 41,13,812 which is a few cases behind Brazil, the world’s second-worst affected nation after the United States.

As per worldometers.info, India reached 2nd position in world terms of a high number of cases of Covid-19 going past Brazil’s tally of 40,93,586 cases at 11 pm. Brazil again regained its place after final tally for Saturday is added.

India’s first case was reported on January 30 and reached one million cases more than five months later on July 16 but it took just 13 days to go from three million to four million cases. It is now third, behind the United States, which has more than 6.1 million cases, and Brazil, which has 4.1 million, a number India could surpass with the current growth rate.

Record 70,000 Covid-19 patients discharged in a single day

The bright spot is that India’s recorded deaths, at 70,626. The highest ever single-day recoveries of 70,072 were recorded on September 5 and currently, the recovery rate now is 77.23 per cent. This has also led to the declining Case Fatality Rate (CFR), which stands at a new low of 1.73 per cent,” Ministry said in a statement.

According to the guidelines by ICMR, “On-demand testing for all people who want to get tested and travel to Indian countries/states requires a negative Covid-19 test at the point of entry. It is mandatory for those travelling to another state or other countries to be corona negative.

As per data received on 2 September, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu account for more than 62 percent of the active cases. New surges are also being recorded in the country’s vast hinterlands.

The number of active cases has also increased in Delhi over the past few days. The Health Ministry tracks cases on a daily, weekly and cumulative basis and these data are shared with states so that every state and UT can decide upon their strategy based on this information.

Certain states having a high positivity rate among healthcare workers: Telangana – 18%, Maharashtra – 16%, Delhi – 14%, Karnataka – 13%, Puducherry – 12% and Punjab -11%.

Immunity against Covid-19

The DG, ICMR, Prof. (Dr.) Balram Bhargava stated, Covid-19 is a new disease and hence, no definite answer can now be given on the duration of immunity. In this connection, DG, ICMR, also stated that immunity against respiratory viral diseases is short-lived and does not last up to a year.

ICMR has already started sampling for the second serosurvey, with many states finishing sample collection and the others in various stages of completing the process. The results of the serosurvey to detect the presence of Covid-19 antibodies in the general population are expected before September-end.

Testing rates up

The reason for high caseload is because testing rates are also gone up significantly. A total of 4, 88, 31,145 samples tested up to 5th September 2020. Of these, 10, 92,654 samples were tested yesterday.

However, the ICMR website shows that only 38.65% of these tests are more accurate RT-PCR test. While Rapid antigen test allows quicker diagnosis but is known for a higher rate of a false negative.

Many states have used the Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) to scale up their testing for Covid-19 but, negative RAT results were not being followed up with an RT-PCR test. This is contrary to the ICMR protocol. It also comes amid alarm over the high rate of false negatives of rapid antigen testing. The Health Ministry had also raised the fact that they do have an installed capacity of conducting more RT-PCR tests and hence they need to scale it up. There are states where the RT-PCR, TRUENAT and CB-NAAT testing capacity is limited.

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