79% decline in COVID cases since May 7, overall recovery rate at 94.3%: Health Ministry

The Union Health Ministry on Tuesday said that the COVID-19 situation across the country is fast improving and the ongoing mass vaccination drive has led to a drastic fall in daily new cases of coronavirus infections and fatalities.

Addressing a press briefing, Luv Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry, said, “There has been a continued and sharp decline in daily new COVID-19 cases, almost 79% fall in the figure as compared to the peak of May 7.’’ The top Health Ministry officials also stated that 322 districts have seen a decline in daily cases in the past one month.

Luv Aggarwal said, “The overall recovery rate has increased to 94.3% (both home isolation +medical infrastructure) and there has been a 6.3% overall decrease in positivity from June 1-7.’’

Aggarwal also said that there has been a 33% decline in the number of cases in the last week and a 65% reduction in active cases. “State-wise, there are 15 states with less than 5% positivity,” Aggarwal, added.

Speaking on his turn, AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria said, “No data, global or Indian, has had any observations of children being affected more. Even in the 2nd wave, kids who were infected had mild illness or co-morbidities. I don’t think we will have a serious infection in children in the future.’’

Replying to a question related to vaccine supply and prices, Dr VK Paul of Niti Aayog said, “The price of vaccines to private sectors (hospitals) will be decided by vaccine manufacturers. States will aggregate demand of the private sector, which means they will oversee how much network of facilities it has, and how many doses does it require.’’

Paul further said that the govt has placed an order to purchase 25 crores doses of Covishield and 19 crore doses of Covaxin. “Govt has also placed an order to purchase 30 crore doses of Biological E’s vaccine, which will be available by September,” Dr VK Paul said.

India on Tuesday reported 86,498 new COVID-19 cases and 2123 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data. This was the lowest number of cases reported in the last 68 days. With the new cases, the COVID case tally in India reached 2,89,09,975.

According to Union Health Ministry, as many as 1,82,282 patients recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours taking the total number of recoveries to 2,73,41,462. Meanwhile, the active number of COVID cases in the country stands at 13,03,702.

The new fatalities pushed the COVID death toll in the country to 3,51,309. As many as 36,82,07,596 samples have been tested in the country up to June 8 including 18,73,485 samples tested on Monday, informed the Indian Council of Medical Research.