Covid-19 LIVE: Recovery rate improves to over 25%, says Health Ministry

Coronavirus India LIVE Updates: With 1,018 new cases reported in last 24 hours, the Covid-19 tally in India crossed the 33,000 mark to stand at 33,610 on Thursday with as many as 1,075 fatalities. According to the Health Ministry, 630 patients recovered in past one day taking the total number of recoveries to 8,372. Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said the recovery rate in India has thus improved to 25.19% while the case fatality rate stood at 3.2%.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi held a video-interaction with former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan on the economic impact of the nationwide lockdown. The economist told the former Congress chief that India needs to be cleverer in lifting the lockdown and open up its economy in a "measured way" as it does not have the capacity to support people across the spectrum for too long. Rajan also said that India needs Rs 65,000 crore to help the poor in the times of pandemic and considering its total GDP, it can afford to do that.

On the global front, the novel coronavirus has so far claimed at least 227,971 lives and infected at least 3.2 million people worldwide since its outbreak at the beginning of this year, according to a tally by John Hopkins University. The United States is the worst-hit, with over 1,039,909 cases and over 59,000 deaths. The worst-affected countries in the world after US in terms of infections are Spain (2,36,899), Italy (2,03,591), France (1,66,543) and United Kingdom (1,66,441).

(Inputs from theindianexpress.com)