'We need not worry even if case tally crosses 1 cr-mark'
New Delhi: Banking upon the steady growth in recovery rate of Covid-19 and decrease in the case fatality rate (CFR), the Health Ministry officials are not much "worried" about the recent spurt in positive cases of Coronavirus as the confirmed cases of the virus crossed 43 lakh mark on Wednesday after recording close to 90,000 fresh cases in a day.
While talking to Millennium Post, a senior official in the Health Ministry said that the situation in India is stable and we need not to "worry" even if the total tally crosses above one crore-mark.
"The major factor to measure the impact of any pandemic is the number of deaths caused by the disease, which is very low in India. The country's CFR is lowest in the world and it has now reduced to 1.69 per cent," the senior official said, on the condition of not to be named.
"The another major factor to assess the impact of the pandemic is its recovery rate, which is also very promising as it has now improved to 77.77 per cent, which means only 20.53 per cent cases are active. The better recovery rate tells the story that containment measures that were adopted to stop the spread of Coronavirus have been proving effective," the official said, adding that the states/UTs must be credited for implementing all containment strategies suggested by the Health Ministry.
However, the official maintained that lockdown has proved very effective in controlling the spread of the infection as more positive cases are being reported due to manifold increase in the number of tests in recent days.
"As of now, above 5.18 crore samples have been tested for Covid-19 positivity and on average about 10 lakh samples are being tested in a day. When there will be more tests, positive cases would also increase," the official said, adding that we need to worry only if CFR would start increasing, which is not happening.
According to Health Ministry data, in the last 15 days, India reported a decrease of 0.15 per cent in case fatality rate as on August 26, the CFR was 1.84 per cent, which reduced to 1.69 per cent on September 9.
Similarly, the country has recorded an increase of 1.47 per cent in recovery rate in the last 15 days as on August 26, the recovery rate was 76.30 per cent which has increased to 77.77 per cent on September 9.
As per the Health Ministry's data, as of now total 33,98,844 patients have recovered and 73,980 have succumbed to the disease out of the total confirmed cases of 43,70,128.
