India has one of the lowest global Covid-19 fatality rates: Harsh Vardhan

"As of now, only 0.29 per cent of cases are on ventilators, 1.93 per cent on ICU and only 2.88 percent of cases are on oxygen," he said

India has one of the lowest COVID fatality rates in the world, said Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday, during the twentieth meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19, at Nirman Bhawan in Delhi.

During the meeting, the Health Minister expressed satisfaction at the various coordinated efforts of the Centre government and those of the States/UTs and said, "In the month since the last meeting of GoM on 31st July, we have made tremendous strides in containing the disease. As many as 26.4 lakh have already recovered. The country's Case Fatality Rate is at its lowest 1.81 per cent and consecutively Recovery Rate has increased to 76.47 per cent."

He further informed the GoM that with the creation of sufficient health facilities, the health infrastructure in the country has been amply strengthened.

"Only 0.29 per cent of cases are on ventilators, 1.93 per cent on ICU and only 2.88 per cent of cases are on oxygen. A total of 1576 labs at present have led to an upsurge in testing and the goal of 10 lakhs tests per day has been fulfilled. More than 9 lakh samples were tested in the last 24 hours and this has led to the cumulative total number of tests crossing the 4 crore mark" he added.

During the meeting, the Health Minister instructed his ministry to develop SOPs for the Members of Parliament and the Legislative Assembly sessions comprising COVID protocols and preventive measures. The GOM also expressed concern about the forthcoming festival seasons and advised everyone to adopt safe and COVID appropriate behaviour.

"The global comparison clearly depicted that India has one of the lowest cases per million (2424) and deaths per million (44) compared to the global average of 3161 and 107.2 respectively," he said while briefing the GoM on the current status of COVID-19 in India.

The minister added that despite being resource-constrained and densely populated, timely lockdown and rapid augmentation of infrastructure by India have enabled to keep the case per million and deaths per million considerably lower compared to other countries.

Minister of External Affairs, Dr S. Jaishankar, and Minister of Civil Aviation, Hardeep S. Puri, along with other ministers were present during the meeting.