NEW DELHI, Dec 7: Contrary to the apprehension that winter months could be more disastrous for the country in respect of COVID-19 surge, India has reported a landmark achievement on Monday with the active caseload falling below four lakh mark for the first time after 140 days and the daily fatalities going down to less than 400 after 157 days. The total fatalities in the last 24 hours were 391.
According to official figures, India’s total active caseload came down to 3,96,729 on Monday which was only 4.1% of total cases. This is the lowest after 140 days. Before this, the total active cases were 3,90,459 on July 20 from where it had touched peak of 10.03 lakh active cases on September 21.
Continuing with the trend of the last 10 days, India has reported more daily recoveries than the daily new cases during the past 24 hours.
While 32,981 new positive cases were found in the country, 39,109 new recoveries were registered during the last 24 hours. The average new cases per million population in the last seven days at 182 was also the lowest in the world which averaged 508 with the highest of 3,781 registered in the United States, followed by 2,406 in Italy, 1,485 in the United Kingdom, 1,391 in Brazil, 1,312 in Russia and 1,103 in France.
The total number of cases per million population had also remained the lowest in India compared to other countries. It stood at 6,988 per million in India compared to the world average of 8,438 with the USA again recording the highest at 42,873 per million followed by 34,345 in France, 30,739 in Brazil, 28,282 in Brazil, 25,129 in the UK, and 16,862 in Russia. Even in respect of death per million, India’s average at 101 was also one of the lowest in the world, the official data claimed.
India also registered improvement in the recovery rates which went up to 94.45% on Monday. The total recovered cases on the day went up to 91,39,901 increasing the gap between Recovered Cases and Active Cases to 87,43,172.
Kerala again became the highest contributor of the daily new cases with 4,777 cases on Monday followed by Maharashtra with 4,757 new cases and West Bengal with 3,143 new cases.
(Manas Dasgupta)