Dr. Harsh Vardhan lauds quality of healthcare; cites low number of serious COVID-19 cases

Union Health Minister Dr.Harsh Vardhan on Wednesday lauded the quality of healthcare being provided across India. He stated that the COVID-19 cases are doubling in India every 11.3 days. He also noted that India had a COVID-19 mortality rate of 3% in comparison to the global mortality rate of around 7%. Moreover, the Union Health Minister pointed out that 86% of the deceased persons had co-morbidities.

He appreciated the fact that only 0.33% of patients are on ventilators, 1.5% of patients are on oxygen support and 2.34% of patients are in ICU. Mentioning that 288 government labs along with 97 private labs were conducting around 60,000 tests every day, he stressed that the Centre was taking necessary steps to increase the testing capacity to 1 lakh tests per day. Currently, there are 31,787 confirmed novel coronavirus cases in India out of which 7,797 persons have recovered while 1008 casualties have been reported.

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Indigenous production of testing kits

Dr.Harsh Vardhan revealed that RT-PCR and antibody test kits would be produced in India by May. According to him, all processes were in an advanced stage, and production would formally commence after the Indian Council of Medical Research gave its approval. He added that indigenous production of these test kits would help in meeting the Central government's target of conducting one lakh COVID-19 tests per day by May 31. Furthermore, he observed that no fresh COVID-19 case had been reported in 80 districts in the last 7 days.

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