India’s COVID positivity rate rises to 8.8% in last one month

India’s positivity rate for covid-19 has increased by more than one percentage point in the last one month, the union health ministry said on Monday.
While cumulative testing rose from 1.2 crore on 14 July to over 3 crore on 16 August, the positivity rate increased to 8.8% from 7.5% in the same period, the government said. “Although higher number of tests will push the positivity rate initially, but as the Delhi experience has amply shown, it will eventually lower when combined with other measures such as prompt isolation, tracking and timely clinical management,” said the union health ministry in a statement.

While India on Monday touchedthe 3 crore mark in conducting covid-19 tests, tests per million (TPM) rose sharply to 21,769. With 7,31,697 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, India is on its resolved drive to increase its testing capacity to 10 lakh tests daily. From one lab at Pune in early January, India now has 1470, including 969 labs in the government sector and 501 private labs.

The government has increased testing and the states are striving to control the pandemic. Public health experts claim that if the containment measures are in place and government claims to have controlled the virus transmission, the positivity rate should go down instead of rising.

“Good news is that the cumulative testing has risen by two and half times in 4 weeks to 3 crores. The not-so-good news is that positivity rate has also increased by more than 1%. If the infection was not spreading into new areas or larger number of people were not getting infected the positivity rate should have remained almost same,” Lalit Kant, a scientist and former head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

“So, the increase in positivity rate tells us two things. One, we need to test more. Two, ‘testing, tracing, isolation’ strategy needs to be more aggressively and effectively implemented. The virus is making inroads in areas where providing healthcare to covid-19 patients may be challenging. There prevention in terms of early diagnosis and isolation would be key,” he said.

On Monday, India recorded over 26,51,290 covid-19 cases and 51,079 deaths due to coronavirus. The highest number of cases are being reported from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

“The covid-19 pandemic is a very patchy pandemic as it goes up and down. In US east coast it’s going down but in southern parts it’s going up. Similarly, in India, Delhi’s situation may have been controlled but it’s going way up in states like Karnataka,” said Shuchin Bajaj from StepOne, an empanelled partner for telemedicine consultations on Aarogya Setu Mitra and helping government in dealing with covid-19.

Meanwhile, the country also registered the highest single day recoveries with as many as 57,584 covid-19 patients getting cured and being discharged in the last 24 hours. With this, India’s recovery rate has crossed the 72% milestone.

With more patients recovering and being discharged from hospitals and home isolation (in case of mild and moderate cases), India’s covid-19 recoveries have reached nearly 2 million. This has ensured that the difference between the recovered and active cases continues to expand. It is 12,42,942 today, the union health ministry said.

Also, the actual case load of the country has reduced and currently comprises only 25.57% of the total positive cases. Early identification of cases has helped to ensure timely and prompt isolation of mild and moderate cases and hospitalisation of the severe and critical cases, thereby leading to timely and effective management of cases. The case fatality rate has further slumped today touching 1.92%, the union health ministry said. – Livemint