India is now testing an approximate 1.1 lakh samples per day. Capacity has been increased by augmenting number of labs, shifts, RT-PCR machines and manpower. As of today, India has 612 total labs, 430 run by ICMR and 182 in the private sector to test the population for COVID-19 infection. Most States/UTs have been working with National Tuberculosis Elimination Program to deploy TrueNAT machines for COVID-19 testing. Indigenous manufacturers of RT-PCR-kits, VTM, swabs & RNA extraction kits have been identified and their production facilitated in the last few months.
Recovery rate in the country continues to improve and presently it is 41.61%. A total of 60,490 patients have so far recovered from COVID-19. The case fatality rate in the country is also showing a downward trend from 3.30% (as on 15th April) to around 2.87% at present which is amongst the lowest in the world. The global average for case fatality is presently around 6.45%. An analysis of case mortality per lakh population indicates that India has about 0.3 deaths per lakh population which is amongst the lowest in the world against the statistics of 4.4 deaths per lakh population for the world. The relatively low death figures, both in terms of mortality per lakh population and case fatality rate, represent timely case identification and clinical management of the cases.
