New Delhi: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday said the government is aiming to bring down India’s COVID-19 mortality rate to less than 1 per cent from the current 1.64 per cent, which is still the lowest in the world.
Replying to a debate in Rajya Sabha, he said the country’s recovery rate of 78-79 per cent is one of the highest in the world, adding though the total cases may have crossed 50 lakh, active cases are less than 20 per cent. Deaths in India due to coronavirus pandemic are less than many nations in Europe and the government was determined to better the testing rate of the US, he said.
The minister said that despite the number of cases, the mortality rate in the country remained one of the lowest in the world. He said steps like testing, isolation of infected persons and other steps can be attributed to this lower mortality rate.
Citing the examples of Spain and Brazil, he said the mortality rate in those countries was over 11 times that of India.
“We want to bring it (mortality rate) to less than one per cent. We have 50 lakh cases right now but out of these, only 10 lakh are active cases in the country right now,” Vardhan said.
He said that various international experts had predicted that the cases in India will rise to 300 million by July-August, resulting in death of 5-6 million people.
“In the country of 135 crore people, we are doing 11 lakh tests now and are second to the US only. It has been possible only due to the united fight against the disease,” he said.
India is among few countries globally which has been able to isolate the virus, Vardhan noted.
He noted that since the outbreak of of the pandemic in the country, the central government has worked in close collaboration with the state governments.
The minister said that all decisions during the period were taken after taking state governments in confidence.
He said that for the last 8 months, the central government, in association with state governments, has worked tirelessly to fight the pandemic.
“I want to say that the whole country in the last eight months, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has fought against the pandemic,” he said. (PTI)
