COVID-19: Central team to visit Bihar on Sunday

A three-member multi-disciplinary central team will visit Bihar on Sunday to review the coronavirus situation in the state and to provide necessary guidance.

New Delhi:The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Friday has assigned a three-member multi-disciplinary central team to visit Bihar on Sunday.

Officials said that the team comprising Lav Agarwal, joint secretary, Dr SK Singh, Director, National Centre for Disease Control and Neeraj Nischal, associate professor (Medicine) AIIMS during their visit will coordinate with state health authorities to review the existing situation and provide necessary support and guidance to contain COVID-19 outbreak.

Meanwhile, India has registered an actual caseload of 3,42,756 corona patients and more than 6.35 lakh (63.33 per cent) have been recovered.

Health Ministry statistics said that from a recovery rate of 52 per cent in mid-June, the country has registered a recovery rate more than 63 per cent in mid-July.

India ranks 106th with 658 cases per million population. "Cases per million population in India are 4 to 8 times less than European countries...COVID-19 cases per million in Russia and US are 8 and 16 times respectively the corresponding figure in India," the ministry said.

India has also witnessed a continuous decline in the daily growth rate of COVID-19 cases from 31.28 per cent at the beginning of April to 3.49 per cent in mid-July.

The Health Ministry said that the case fatality rate is 18.6 deaths per million which is one of the lowest in the world.

The Ministry said that almost 80 per cent of the asymptomatic and mild cases have been advised home isolation. The moderate and severe patients are being treated in either dedicated COVID hospitals or dedicated COVID health care centres.

Significantly, less than 1.94 per cent of the cases are in ICU, 0.35 per cent cases are on ventilators and 2.81 per cent cases are on Oxygen beds.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said that India is on track of achieving the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) targets for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and National Health Policy (NHP).

"With the persistent decline in MMR, India is on track of achieving the SDG of 70/lakh live births by 2030 and NHP target of 100/live births by 2020," he said while referring to India's lowest mortality rate of 7.4 per cent as announced by Registrar General of India.