India's COVID-19 fatality rate drops to 2.43% from 3.36% on Jun 17: Health Ministry

India's COVID-19 fatality rate has dropped significantly to 2.43 per cent from 3.36 per cent on June 17 due to effective clinical manment of coronavirus cases, Centre said on Tuesday, asserting country has handled pandemic "relatively well".

Thirty states and Union Territories have COVID-19 positivity rate lower than that of national aver which stands at 8.07 per cent, Rajesh Bhushan, officer on special duty in Union health ministry, told a press conference here.

"19 states and UTs are performing more than 140 tests per day per million population. Just doing tests is t eugh, y have to be done at a level of 140 tests per day per million so that rate of positivity reduces and comes down to 10 per cent first and n continue testing process so that rate of positivity furr reduces to 5 per cent or lower," he said.

"So that is ultimate aim to maintain this level of testing and bring positivity lower to 5 per cent eventually or even lower than that," he said.

In India, COVID-19 deaths per million population stand at 20.4 per million which is amongst lowest in world, Bhushan said.

"re are several countries where deaths per million is 21 times or 33 times higher than in India. global aver stands at 77 deaths per million population," he said.

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"So far, nation has mand COVID-19 relatively well. Government of India is cooperating with all states and UTs. All decisions are being taken based on science and evidence-based inputs and in consultation with domain kwledge experts," Bhushan said.

He also shared a chart showing that COVID-19 case fatality rate has declined from 3.36 per cent on June 17 to 2.43 per cent w.

He asserted that significant decline in case fatality rate has been due to effective clinical manment of cases.

India recorded 37,148 COVID-19 cases in last 24 hours, pushing its tally to 11,55,191 , while total number of recoveries increased to 7,24,577, according to Union health ministry data issued on 8 am Tuesday.

death toll due to disease rose to 28,084 with 587 fatalities reported in a day, data showed.

re are 4,02,529 active cases of coronavirus infection currently in country, while 7,24,577 people have recovered till w. Thus, 62.72 per cent people have recovered so far, ministry said.

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