The health ministry said the govt’s aim is to first bring down the Covid-19 positivity rate to 10 per cent in areas that have high caseload, and then ultimately to 5 per cent.
NewDelhi, July 21:
The Union Health Ministry today said the ultimate aim for the government is to bring down the positivity rate of Covid-19 cases to 5 per cent. Positivity rate is the percentage of people who test positive for a disease out of the total number of tests carried out.
Addressing a press briefing on Covid-19, the health ministry said the government’s aim is to first bring down the positivity rate to 10 per cent in areas that have high caseload, and then ultimately to 5 per cent.
The health ministry said at present India’s overall positivity rate is 8.07 per cent and that there are 30 states/UTs where the positivity rate is less than the national average. This include states like Rajasthan (2.46 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (3.90 per cent) and West Bengal (6.94 per cent).
However, the ministry did not mention the positivity rate in worst affected states of Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu.
Even though the total number of Covid-19 cases in India has crossed 11.55 lakh, the health ministry maintained that India is doing better than many large nations.
The government said even today, India’s cases per million tally is 837. “This is quite low in comparison to many big countries in the world. There are some large countries where this figure is 12 to 13 times that of India,” the health ministry said.
Elaborating on these numbers, the health ministry claimed that India has been faring better than other countries even in terms of deaths per million. To buttress this point, the ministry said the deaths per million figure for India is 20.8, while the world average is 77. “In the UK, the figure is 667, in the US 421, in Brazil 371 and in Mexico 302. The US figure is 21 times than that of India’s and in the UK it is 33 times,” the health ministry said during a presentation on Covid-19.
