With 68,898 new cases, India’s tally surges past 2.9 million

New Delhi, Aug 21
 India recorded 68,898 cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) disease and 983 deaths in a single day, taking the country’s tally past 2.9 million, Union Health Ministry data showed on Friday.
This is the third day in a row that the daily Covid-19 cases in the country have been more than 64,000--it was 64,531 on Wednesday and a record 69,652 on Thursday. The number of active cases stands at 692,028 across the country and the death toll at 54,899, the Health Ministry’s dashboard showed at 8 am.
With 62,282 recoveries in the last 24 hours, India’s recovery rate amongst Covid-19 patients has reached 74.29%. India now has 2,158,946 coronavirus disease patients who have recovered. The gap between active and recovered has gone up further at 1,466,918.
“Early identification through TESTING, surveillance & contact TRACING along with focus on timely and appropriate clinical TREATMENT of COVID19 patients have ensured that not only is the Case Fatality Rate lower than the global average and progressively declining (current figure is 1.89%), but also a small proportion of the active cases are on ventilator support,” the Health Ministry said on Thursday.
India performed 9 lakh tests in close to 15,00 labs spread across India for coronavirus disease (Covid-19) for the second consecutive day on Thursday, taking the total number of tests in the country to 3,66,71,613 so far, which experts say is important to know the exact disease burden.
“Recovery of 20,96,664 patients has been made possible because of effective implementation of the policy of testing aggressively, tracking comprehensively and treating efficiently. Focus on Standard of Care protocol including use of non-invasive oxygen, better skilled doctors in the intensive care units (ICUs) and hospitals, and improved ambulance services have culminated in yielding the desired results,” said the Union Health Ministry in a statement.
Uttar Pradesh performed the maximum number of tests at 109,516 on Thursday. The close second was Bihar with 107,945 tests, followed by Maharashtra that performed 76,591 tests. Meghalaya had zero tests performed on Thursday, followed by Andaman and Nicobar Islands with 366, and Sikkim with 387 tests in a day.
India is the third-worst country hit by the coronavirus pandemic as 22,609,467 people have been infected by Sars-Cov-2, which causes the coronavirus disease, and 792,708 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracker. The United States has recorded 5,573,743 cases and Brazil 3,501,975.
Hindustan Times