India has now lost more than 20,000 lives to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and total infections soared past 700,000, data from across the country showed on Monday, posing as a fresh reminder of the relentless nature of the outbreak and the challenge the country of over 1.3 billion people faces in maintaining the precarious control it has not established.
India’s case fatality rate is approximately 2.8% and the number of active cases a little over a third of the total, suggesting the country’s health care system is able to keep up with the outbreak.
In the national capital, the number of cumulative infections inched above 100,000 after the city added 1,379 cases on Monday, the lowest increase since June 9. Overall, the country added 22,310 cases and 472 deaths on Monday. The country has now had 719,594 infections and 20,172 deaths.
According to HT’s dashboard of case numbers released by states, while Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu continue to add the highest number of cases, among all Indian states, states such as Karnataka, Telangana and Assam have recorded an acceleration in the number of new cases compared to a week before.
Across the world, total cases rose to 11,652, 634 and 538,513 fatalities were recorded due to Covid-19.
“India’s death rate is not high, especially if you compare with countries such as Italy or even the US; and main reason for that is the level of care that we have been able to provide to our serious patients because of early preparedness,” said Dr GC Khilnani, former head, pulmonology department, All India Institute of Medical Sciences.
“People may say lockdown was imposed prematurely because the number of cases wasn’t that high in March, but that is what gave us time to prepare. We could ramp up our health infrastructure so that serious cases got timely hospitalisation and oxygen support,” he added.
According to the Union government, the positivity rate for tests — the proportion of samples from among all tests that are positive — was 6.73%, and Delhi recorded a sharp decrease in this number over the past three weeks, a sign that testing may have been adequately scaled up. 
The positivity rate in Delhi dropped from 30% to 10% in this period, the government added.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the testing in India crossed the 10 million milestone on Monday.
Source{ Hindustan Times
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