India cites low Covid-19 death toll as cases rise to 3rd highest in world

New Delhi, Jul 7 (efe-epa).- India, the third-worst affected nation by the new coronavirus worldwide with over 700,000 infections, has been trying to focus on the positives with the government on Tuesday highlighting the fact that the nation had one of the lowest fatality rates with around 20,000 deaths in a population of over 1.3 billion.

Authorities cited the World Health Organization’s data over the impact of the pandemic, released on Monday, which put India’s deaths per million inhabitants at 14.27, much below the global average of 68.29 and countries like the United Kingdom (651.4), Spain (607.1), Italy (576.6) and the United States (391).

“India has ramped up the hospital infrastructure to adequately and effectively manage the cases. The preparedness included arrangement of oxygen support, ICU and ventilator facilities,” the Indian health ministry said in a statement explaining the data.

The ministry said that there were 1201 dedicated Covid-19 hospitals across the country and a “Test, Trace, Treat” policy had been adopted with more than 10 million tests carried out so far, including an average of 200,000 tests per day in recent weeks.

“Such level of preparedness has shown results in continuously improving the Recovery Rate and resulting in low Case Fatality Rate,” the statement said.

However, the global image of the current situation of the pandemic in India has not been too positive based on the number of cases, as it occupies the third place worldwide behind the US (around 2.8 million cases) and Brazil (1.6 million), having recently overtaken Russia (688,000).

However, if one considers the number of cases per million inhabitants, India’s around 720,000 confirmed infections amount to among the lowest case percentages worldwide.

“India’s cases per million population is 505.37 while the global average is at 1453.25,” the government underlined.

The ministry said that the country had 259,557 active cases, although its infection curve has continued to rise in recent days.

India has announced that it would launch a vaccine against the novel coronavirus by Aug. 15 “at the latest,” after just one and a-half months of human trials, as per a statement released by the Indian Council of Medical Research last week. EFE-EPA

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