Health Minister makes statement on India's Covid battle in Parliament; hails key ratios

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan addressed Parliament's Monsoon session over the COVID-19 situation in the country on Monday as the Lok Sabha convened for the first time since the pandemic broke out. He began by first giving the global statistics and figures of COVID-19 and then elaborated on India's Coronavirus figures. He compared India's fatality rate to that of the world, clearly showing that India's fatality rate is nearly half of the world's rate. While the world's fatality rate stood at 3.2%, India's was restricted to 1.67%.

"As on September 11, 2020, 215 countries and territories worldwide have been affected by COVID-19. As per WHO, 2.79 crore confirmed cases across the world with more than 9.05 lakh deaths with a case fatality rate of 3.2%," he said while elaborating on the COVID-19 global Covid-19 statistics.

"As on September 11, 2020, 45,62,414 confirmed cases and 76,271 death with case fatality 1.67% have been reported in India. As many as 35,42,663, which is 77.65% of cases, have recovered," he said while giving India's COVID-19 figures. 

"Maximum cases and deaths have primarily been reported from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu Karnataka, UP, Delhi, West Bengal, Bihar, Telangana, Odisha, Assam, Kerala and Gujarat. All these have reported more than one lakh cases," he added while apprising on the COVID-19 situation in India.

'55 deaths per million - one of the lowest in the world'

While elaborating further, he said that India's infection and the fatality rate is one of the lowest in the world as compared to similarly affected countries.

"India's infection and death toll stand at 3328 infections per million, 55 deaths per million population which is one of the lowest in the world as compared to similarly affected countries," the health minister said.

"India is now self-sufficient in terms of production of PPEs and possesses the capacity of exporting to other countries which is a stark contrast as compared to the time when India had no indigenous manufacturing of PPEs," he added.

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On September 12, the Health Ministry posted a graph depicting the rate of active casees decreasing and the recoveries rate improving drastically. 

India is conducting more than 11 lakh tests daily on an average. Due to the largescale testing, the infections are being identified and the people are able to undergo treatment and hence the single-day spike of infections is also higher. Due to the large-scale testing and tracking and treatment, the number of recoveries is also improving massively with the mortality rate getting lower by the day.

As on September 14, the total number of COVID-19 infections in the country has risen to 48,46,428, of which 9,86,598 are active cases, while 37,80,108 have recovered from the infection and 79,722 have succumbed to the virus. About 9,78,500 samples were tested on September 13, being a Sunday, taking the count of total COVID-19 tests to over 5.72 crore.

Watch the entire speech here:

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