India’s Covid-19 recovery rate improves three-fold to 19.89% — after 30 days of lockdown

• The recovery rate of Covid-19 patients increased to 19.89% on April 23.
  
• Exactly a month before, India’s recovery rate stood at 6.6%.
  
• In the last 24 hours, India reported 1409 new coronavirus cases, taking the total number of cases to 21393. Of these, 4257 have been cured.
  
  

The recovery rate of Indian coronavirus patients increased to 19.89% on April 23, said Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Exactly a month back, India’s recovery rate stood at 6.6%.

Health authorities witnessed over 5% increase in the recovery rate between April 16 and 21 — two days after the government extended the lockdown.

“We have been able to cut virus transmission, minimise the spread of Covid-19 during the 30 days of lockdown,” said the Ministry of Health in a press briefing.

In the last 24 hours, India reported 1409 new coronavirus cases, taking the total number of cases to 21,393. Of these, 4,257 have been cured.

Despite a 24-fold increase in testing, positive cases aren’t rising, says ICMR

The Indian government has been under fire since the start of the outbreak for testing less.When the country first started testing there were only 62 government laboratories which could conduct the test. The number has now grown to 325 including both private and government labs. And so has the number of tests, claims ICMR.

So far, India has conducted half a million tests. However, health ministry claims, the proportion of positive cases remained the same at 4-4.5% of the total samples.

In spite of this increase, India still has one of the lowest testing rates in the world when compared to other countries. Germany is testing 15,730 samples per million, whereas Italy is conducting 14,114 tests per million.

However, India is facing many roadblocks to increasing testing as a large number of its imported tests turned out to be defective. The country is now banking on South Korean companies to export as many as 500,000 tests which can help speed up the process.


See also:

India stalls use of rapid COVID-19 test kits for 2 days after states complain of defective results