India’s Covid-19 cases per lakh lowest globally: Health ministry

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 22

As COVID cases today surged to 4, 25, 282 cases marking significant daily spikes in infections, the government said infections per lakh people in India was among the lowest in the world.

The Ministry of Health cited WHO’s latest situation report on the disease to say that the situation in the country was much better than most parts of the developed world including the US, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil.

India’s COVID cases per one lakh people are 30.04 as against the global average of 114.67.

This figure is much higher for the US at 671 cases, Germany at 583, Spain at 526, UK at 448.

“India’s disease burden cannot be compared with other countries in isolation of the vastness of its population. When you compared Indian case load keeping the population in mind you will see that India is doing much better than most nations despite its huge population. This is the result of graded preemptive response,” the Ministry said.

The COVID responders of the government also said India was widening the gap between active infections and recoveries.

Out of 4.25 lakh cases, 237295 have recovered and 174387 are active.

The recovery rate is up to 55.77 per cent.

Total number of deaths now are 13699 with new daily infections at 14821 and new daily recoveries at 9440.

Rising numbers of cases in Delhi and Maharashtra continue to be top concerns of the government with these two states making up nearly 45 per cent of all cases in India. Delhi has also overtaken Tamil Nadu to become the second most COVID affected state in India after Maharashtra.

Active testing and tracing efforts are key to disease control along with the community’s realisation that physical distance is a life saver until a vaccine or a drug arrives on the scene which would not be earlier than year end as per optimistic projections by the WHO.