New Delhi: Ministry of Health today said that deaths per million population caused due to COVID-19 in India is amongst the lowest in the world and it stands at 94 deaths per million population.
Briefing media, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that India records average of 3 new deaths per million population in the last 7 days, whereas global average stands at 8 new deaths per million population.
In terms of new cases, Mr Bhushan said, in India, 211 new cases per million population were reported in last 7 days, whereas global average of new cases per million population stands at 510. He said, there is also continuous decline in the daily new cases and only 29,163 new cases were reported in the last 24 hours.
Mr Bhushan also informed that the trend of new daily recoveries exceeding the daily new cases continues with 40,791 cases recovering in the last 24 hours against 29,163 newly detected cases.
He also said that recovered cases have crossed 82,90 lakh and recovery rate stands at 93.43%. The total number of active cases in the country is around 4.53 lakh.
He also said that the impact of the festivals and elections in some states will be seen in this week and the next week in terms of increase in Covid cases.
In context to rising COVID-19 cases in Delhi, Mr Bhushan said that the Central government took urgent actions in this regard which include increase in overall beds including ICU beds, double testing to one lakh to 1.2 lakh per day from around 60,000 cases per day, enforce quarantine of contacts and enforcement of containment zone SOPs among others.
Elaborating more about the action taken in view of COVID-19 cases in Delhi, NITI Aayog member, Dr V K Paul said that 3500 ICU beds are currently available in Delhi which will be increased to 6000 ICU beds in next few days. He said, 537 new ICU beds will be added at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel COVID Hospital. He said, 10 mobile testing laboratories will be deployed for testing out of which 5 will be pressed into service within 4 to 5 days.
Dr Paul also said, house to house survey will be done in containment zones in Delhi and in other vulnerable zones. He said, a total of seven to eight thousand teams will be engaged on this work.
On vaccine development, he said, the vaccine of Serum Institute is in the third phase. He said, at least, five vaccines are under trial in the country of which two are in the third phase trial.
