New Delhi:
India's COVID-19 caseload rose to 73,70,468 with 63,371 new infections being reported in a day, while the number of people who have recuperated from the disease crossed 64 lakh pushing the recovery rate to 87.56 per cent, according to the Health Ministry data updated on Friday.
The coronavirus death toll climbed to 1,12,161 with the virus claiming 895 lives in a span of 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am showed.
For eight days in a row, the active cases of COVID-19 remained below 9 lakh.
There are 8,04,528 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which comprises 10.92 per cent of the total caseload, while the recoveries have surged to 64,53,779, the data stated.
The COVID-19 case fatality rate due COVID-19 was recorded at 1.52 per cent.
"India continues to have one of the lowest COVID-19 deaths per million population globally, currently pegged at 80," the ministry said.
India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23 and 40 lakh on September 5. It went past 50 lakh on September 16, 60 lakh on September 28 and crossed 70 lakh on October 11.
According to the ICMR, a cumulative total of 9,22,54,927 samples have been tested up to October 15, with 10,28,622 samples being tested on Thursday.
Meanwhile, according to the head of one of the country’s largest drug makers,.India has the ability to aggressively ramp up coronavirus testing capacity, a move that will help it check a wave of new active cases hitting hospitals and skirt an economically unviable lockdown,
With pooled testing that can include as many as 10 people in one go, India “could potentially scale up its testing 10-fold,” said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the founder and chairman of Biocon Ltd. Pooled testing increases the number of people that can be tested using the same amount of resources but it works well in clusters with low prevalence. Shaw suggested using this technique in combination with the more prevalent rapid antigen and RT-PCR tests.
“We are way below the testing levels of other countries,” she said at the Bloomberg India Economic Forum on Thursday. “We need to ramp up our testing — the number of active cases are manageable at this point of time, but if the active cases start surging we simply don’t have the capacity.”