Doubling rate of COVID-19 cases drop after lockdown

New Delhi: India's doubling rate of COVID-19 positive cases has taken a dip and currently stands at 6.2 days instead of the earlier three days, the Union Health ministry said on Friday.

"Before lockdown, the doubling rate of COVID-19 cases was about three days, but according to data in the past seven days, the doubling rate of cases now stands at 6.2 days. The doubling rate in 19 states and Union Territories are even lower than average doubling rate," Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said at the daily news briefing.

"The doubling rate is lower than the national level in 19 states and Union Territories. Kerala, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Ladakh, Puducherry, Delhi, Bihar, Odisha, TN, Andhra Pradesh, UP, Punjab, Assam, Tripura all have low doubling rates of Coronavirus cases," he added.

"The ratio between COVID-19 patients who have recovered and deaths stands at 80:20 in the country, which is higher than that of several other countries suffering due to the health crisis," the Health ministry official said.

He also added that 13.6 per cent of those infected have recovered so far from the highly contagious disease.

The tally of total confirmed cases climbed to 13,835 and with 32 new deaths in the last 24 hours while the nationwide toll reached 452. However, with 252 patients cured in a day, the country reported highest ever recovery at the rate of 12.7 per cent on Friday.

Maharashtra reported highest 3,205 confirmed cases out of which 300 have recovered and 194 deaths, followed by Delhi 1,640, Madhya Pradesh 1,308, Tamil Nadu 1,267, Rajasthan 1,131 and Gujarat 1,031.

The official also said the average growth factor of cases from April 1 has been 1.2, whereas, between March 15 and 31, it was 2.1.

Commenting on preparedness, the official said: "The cases have reduced by 40 per cent due to increase in testing, including that of cases with severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) and influenza-like illness (ILI). Also, there are 1,919 dedicated COVID-19 hospitals with 1.73 lakh isolation beds and 21,800 ICU beds readily available."

The 5 lakh rapid antibody testing kits, which arrived from China on Thursday, are being distributed to states for districts with high case burden.

Senior ICMR official Raman R Gangakhedkar said: "As of now 3,19,400 COVID-19 tests have been conducted and out of these, 28,340 were conducted on Thursday, of which 23,932 were done at 183 laboratories under the ICMR network and remaining 4,408 at 80 private labs."

Experts have claimed that the death rate will not increase further from existing 3.2 per cent as the country would witness a significant increase in the recovery rate after highest ever number of patients (252) were discharged in the last 24 hours from various hospitals.

Containment operations will be scaled down if no secondary positive case of COVID-19 is reported from a quarantine zone for at least four weeks after the last confirmed test has been isolated and all his contacts have been followed up for 28 days, the Union Health ministry added.