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- Published: August 18, 2020 19:27
New Delhi: The country registered the highest number of recoveries so far from COVID-19 in a single day. Nearly 58,000 people in the country got cured and returned to their homes in the last 24 hours. With this, the cumulative recoveries from COVID-19 in the country has gone close to touch 2 million mark.
So far, a total of 19,77,779 people have recovered in the country and with this the nationwide recovery rate has further improved to 73.18%. The case fatality rate continues to show steady decline and now stands at 1.92%. 30 States and Union Territories in the country have even lower fatality rate than the national average.
The Health Ministry said that around 55,000 new cases of Covid-19 have been registered in the country in the last 24 hours taking the total number of cases to 27,02,743. The positivity rate also witnessed a steady decline and now stands at only 8.81% out of the total samples tested for COVID. Presently, the total number of active corona cases in the country is 6,73,166. In a single day, 876 deaths have also been reported taking the toll to 51,797.
India is continuously stepping up it’s COVID testing capacity. In the last 24 hours, the country moved closer to testing one million samples in a day. With a record testing of nearly 9 lakh samples in a day, the nation achieved another milestone yesterday. The Union Health Ministry informed that the remarkable feat has been achieved by rigorously following the ‘Test, Track and Treat’ strategy.
It said that the strong resolve and determination of the Union Government along with the States and Union Territories to follow aggressive testing as the first important step in the early detection and isolation of COVID-19 cases has resulted in rapidly increasing the number of tests done per day.
The week-wise average daily tests conducted has witnessed a sharp increase from around 2.3 lakh in the first week of July 2020 to around eight lakh in the current week.
With eight lakh 99 thousand 864 tests yesterday, the cumulative COVID sample tests done so far in the country has crossed 3.9 crore.
Government said that the strong determinant of this milestone has been a sustained expansion of testing labs across the country. From merely one lab in January this year, the country today has one thousand 476 labs. Out of these, 971 are government labs while the remaining 505 are private labs.