Doubling rate of Covid cases has slowed down to 11.3 days, govt says

NEW DELHI: India’s doubling rate of Covid-19 positive cases has slowed further in last three days to an average of 11.3 days with only 0.33% people on ventilator support, health minister Harsh Vardhan said on Wednesday.
The minister said 1.5% of Covid patients are on oxygen support and 2.34% patients in intensive care units, which reflects the “quality of care being provided across the country”. India’s Covid-19 mortality rate is around 3% even as the global mortality rate of coronavirus patients is around 7%, the health minister added.

About 86% of Covid-19 patients who have succumbed to the deadly virus so far also had co-morbid conditions like acute diabetes and hypertension. At least 288 government laboratories are working along with 97 private lab chains with around 16,000 sample collection centres which are testing around 60,000 samples per day, according to health ministry data.
“The government is working hard to increase the testing capacity to 1 lakh tests per day within the next few days,” Vardhan added. With 1813 new Covid-19 cases and 71 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the total number of coronavirus positive cases in India has risen to 31,787, which includes 22,982 active cases and 7,797 cured patients, according to data provided by the health ministry.