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Centre aims to bring down Covid positivity rate to 5%
The Union Health Ministry says the aim is to first bring down Covid-19 positivity rate to 10 per cent in areas that have high caseload, and then ultimately to 5 per cent
- Positivity rate is percentage of people who test positive out of total tests conducted
- India's present overall positivity rate is 8.07%
- India doing better than many large nations, says Centre
- Deaths per million figure in India is 20.8, while world average 77
- India testing better than the benchmark set by WHO
New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry on Tuesday said the ultimate aim of the Central 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.
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.
Speaking about the tests conducted in India, the Health ministry said the country has been testing more people than the benchmark set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The ministry said the WHO guidelines recommend that countries should conduct 140 tests per million population per day and that this must be carried out for a prolonged period. It said India against the recommendation of 140 tests per million per day, India is currently conducting 180.
During the media briefing, the Health ministry also said that people should focus on the number of active cases instead of talking about the total number of Covid-19 cases. It said the active cases are the ones that reflects the actual load of Covid-19 on the country's healthcare system.
