New Delhi: At the COVID-19 press briefing on Tuesday, Lav Agarwal, joint secretary at the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said that India’s fatality rate (deaths reported among confirmed cases) has dropped from 3.3% to 2.87%.
He added that India’s is among the lowest COVID-19 fatality rates in the world.
India’s case count crossed 1.45 lakh on the same day.
Agarwal compared India’s figures with the 6.4% global fatality rate.
“While the world recorded 4.5 deaths per lakh population, India has reported 0.3 deaths per lakh population. This is because the government utilised the lockdown period in preparation of health infrastructure, stringent measures in the containment zones and social distancing,” he said.
He also added that 60,490 people have recovered from COVID-19 and the recovery rate has improved from 7.1% in March to 11.42% in the second lockdown to 26.59% in the third lockdown to 41.61% today.
Agarwal claimed that India has low number of cases per one lakh people. “The world reported 69.9 cases per lakh population whereas India only 10.7 cases per lakh population. This is a significant if one consider the availability of resources and population density in India.”
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He said the number of cases in India per lakh population is lower than Spain (504 cases per lakh population), Belgium (499 cases per lakh population), USA (486 cases per lakh population) and even Mexico (52.2 cases per lakh population)
Speaking about the future plan of action, Agarwal said the focus now would be on prevention and early case detection. Other instructions involved using physical distancing as social vaccine, use of masks in public places, hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, environmental sanitation and protection of elderly and vulnerable population at home.
Director General of the ICMR Balram Bhargava said that India is now testing 1.1 lakh samples in a day. It has 612 labs, including 430 public and 182 private.
“Guidelines have been issued to states advising immediate testing for symptomatic and home quarantine for asymptomatic,” he added.
He also said most states are working with the National Tuberculosis Elimination Program (NTEP) to deploy TrueNAT machines for COVID-19 testing.
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On being asked the reason behind the World Health Organization (WHO) pausing the clinical trial for hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the use of which the ICMR had heavily advised, he replied, “COVID-19 is an evolving field. We don’t know which drugs will work, which won’t. Lots of drugs have been repurposed for use in COVID whether prophylaxis or as treatment. HCQ is a safer, widely used anti-malarial drug. The biological plausibility and in-vitro study have found that it has anti-viral properties.”
He added that studies to test HCQ have been conducted at AIIMS, ICMR, and in three public hospitals in Delhi and it was found that it may work without major side effects except occasional nausea, vomiting and palpitations.
“It should be continued. There is no harm, some benefit may be there. We have clearly advised that it should be taken with food, and not on empty stomach. We also advised that one ECG must be done during its use as prophylaxis,” he added.