Record 4,329 daily deaths, but recoveries go up 4% in 2 weeks

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 18

India on Tuesday logged the highest single-day deaths since the Covid outbreak last year as 4,329 persons succumbed to the virus even as the national caseload breached the 2.5-crore mark with cumulative recoveries standing at 2.1 crore.

The national Covid toll reached 2,78,719 on Tuesday, though the overall fatality rate remained stable at 1.1 per cent.

In a positive trend, the government said, the virus R0 (reproductive number) — the expected number of cases directly generated by one infected person in a population — had fallen below 1.

“We are now accelerating the rural response. In many states the pandemic curve is stabilising. There is, however, a continuous concern in some states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha and Punjab. The picture is mixed, but reproduction number below 1 means the pandemic is shrinking overall,” said Member, Health, NITI Aayog.

“Recovery trends are positive. The rate has risen from 81.7% on May 3 to 85.6% today,” Health Ministry spokesperson Lav Agarwal said. The number of states with over one lakh active cases has come down from 11 to eight over the past one week and only eight states are reporting over 10,000 daily cases.