Cheena Kapoor
18 August 2020•Update: 18 August 2020
NEW DELHI, India
In a new peak, India’s Health Ministry confirmed Tuesday that 899,864 coronavirus tests were conducted in the country in the last 24 hours.
The total number of tested samples now stands at 30,941,264.
At this rate of testing, the country’s positivity rate -- the average rate of samples testing positive for the coronavirus disease across the country -- has remained low at 8.81% compared to the weekly national average of 8.84%.
“Aggressive testing leads to early identification and isolation of COVID-19 positive cases. This coupled with efficient clinical treatment brings the fatality rate down,” said the ministry.
India registered 55,079 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, crossing the 2.7 million mark, the ministry said early Tuesday.
The nation’s infection tally now stands at 2,702,742.
The death toll has reached 51,797 with 867 new fatalities in the past 24 hours. The country has the fourth-highest death toll in the world.
India has reported the highest number of daily cases across the world for the last 14 days, surpassing the US and Brazil, which have a higher caseload, according to World Health Organization data.
“The COVID pandemic has given us a chance to revisit and structurally re-imagine a robust public health infrastructure for our country,” said Health Minister Harsh Vardhan in his digital address at a two-day public health conference in the country.
The newly formed National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 met all the leading vaccine manufacturers in India on Monday evening to get data on the present stages of various candidate vaccines.
