COVID-19 doubling rate improves to 6.2 days; growth rate declines by 40%: Health Ministry

In a piece of good news, the Ministry of Health said on Friday said the average growth rate of COVID-19 cases has declined by 40% from mid-March to now while the doubling rate of the disease has gone up to 6.2 days according to data of last seven days. The Ministry informed that the doubling rate is lower than the national level in 19 States and Union Territories. The recovery rate of COVID-19 patients has also improved to 13.06%.

"The average growth factor of cases has been 1.2 from April 1, while during March 15-31, the average growth factor was 2.1. This decline of 40% has occurred due to an increase in testing, including testing of SARI (severe acute respiratory illness) and ILI (influenza like illness) cases," Joint Secretary of Health Lav Agarwal said.

He also said India has been doing better than others on outcome ratio — the ratio of the number of COVID-19 recoveries vs. number of deaths. "We are making efforts to further improve this ratio," the official said.

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Doubling rate improves

"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, Union Territories are even lower than average doubling rate," Lav Agarwal said.

The 19 States and UTs are — Kerala, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Ladakh, Puducherry, Delhi, Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Assam, Tripura, Karnataka, Telangana and Jammu and Kashmir. Agarwal attributed this trend to the field level work done and maintained that the vigil needs to be continued to further raise the doubling rate.

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Recovered-death ratio of India higher than others

The Health Ministry also informed that the ratio between recovered COVID-19 patients and deaths stands at 80:20 in India which is higher than that in several other counties. 1007 new COVID-19 cases and 23 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, the Ministry informed taking the tally of confirmed cases and deaths to 13,387 and 437 respectively. 1749 patients have recovered, 260 in one day.

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