The doubling time of coronavirus cases in India has improved to 13.6 in the last three days, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said

The fatality rate of coronavirus cases has fallen to 3.1% and the recovery rate has improved to 37.5%, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan said on Sunday.

As of Saturday, there were 3.1% active COVID-19 patients in ICU, 0.45% on ventilators and 2.7% on oxygen support, Dr Harsh Vardhan said.

The doubling time of coronavirus cases in India has improved to 13.6 in the last three days; The figure stood at 11.5 for the previous 14 days.

As on May 17, a total of 90,927 cases had been reported from the country. Of these, 34,109 people had been cured and 2,872 deaths had occurred. The number of new confirmed cases added in the last 24 hours was 4,987, the Union Health Minister said.

According to an official statement, Dr. Harsh Vardhan also highlighted that the testing capacity in the country had gone up to 1,00,000 tests per day through 373 Government laboratories and 152 private laboratories.

Cumulatively, 22,79,324 tests had been done so far for COVID-19, whereas, 90,094 samples were tested yesterday. “Today, there are eight States/UTs that have not reported any cases of COVID-19 in last 24 hrs. i.e. A &N Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Chandigarh, Ladakh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Puducherry. Also, Daman & Diu, Sikkim, Nagaland and Lakshadweep have not reported any cases till now”, he stated.

Health infrastructure strengthened across India

India now has 916 dedicated COVID hospitals with 1,80,473 beds (Isolation beds- 1,61,169 and ICU beds- 19,304) and 2,044 dedicated COVID Health Centres with 1,28,304 beds (Isolation beds- 1,17,775 and ICU beds- 10,529), Dr Harsh Vardhan said.

There are 9,536 quarantine centres and 6,309 COVID Care Centres with 5,64,632 beds e to combat COVID-19 in the country. The Centre has provided 90.22 lakh N95 masks and 53.98 lakh Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) to the States/ UTs / Central Institutions, he further added.

While India sees a return to a New Normal, following simple hygiene measures like the use of face covers in public places, washing hands with soap frequently for at least 20 seconds or using alcohol based sanitisers was the need of the hour. The Union Health Minister also referred to precautions like not spitting in public and sanitising one’s workplace including regularly touched surfaces like table tops.