India has 1 Covid death per lakh against world’s 6

India has 1 Covid death per lakh against world’s 6

Sushmi.Dey@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:  24.06.2020

India has one death per lakh population due to Covid-19 while the global average is more than six times at 6.04, the health ministry said on Tuesday, claiming that India had one of the lowest deaths per lakh population in the world due to timely detection of cases, extensive contact tracing and effective clinical management.

On June 2, India’s Covid-19 fatality per lakh population was 0.41, against 4.9 globally.

Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) expanded the network of laboratories across the country to 1,000 to test for Covid-19. This includes 730 government labs and 270 in the private sector.

“This is an important milestone in the fight against coronavirus. Since the beginning, we have been focusing on 3Ts — testing, tracking and treating to fight the disease. Through increased testing, we are fighting this virus. Our goal was to establish a lab in every district of the country, which we have achieved to a large extent,” ICMR director general Dr Balram Bhargava said.

The health ministry has recorded 14,011 deaths due to Covid-19 so far. This includes 312 fatalities reported in 24 hours till 8 am on Tuesday, while 14,933 new cases took the total caseload to 4,40,215.

Citing the World Health Organisation’s latest situation report, the ministry said coronavirus-related fatalities per lakh population in the UK was 63.13, while it was 60.60 in Spain, 57.19 in Italy, 36.30 in the US, 27.32 in Germany, 23.68 in Brazil and 5.62 in Russia.

“This is also a testimony to the graded, pre-emptive and proactive approach taken by the government along with states/UTs for prevention, containment and management of Covid-19,” the ministry said.

So far, 2,48,189 patients have recovered from the disease, taking the recovery rate to 56.38%. There were 1,78,014 active cases.