States told to limit COVID case fatalities to less than 1%

Union Cabinet Secretary Rajeev Gauba on Thursday held a video conference with the Chief Secretaries and Health Secretaries of nine States and one Union Territory. Gauba during the meeting has asked all the representatives to control COVID transmission and keep the mortality below 1 per cent.

New Delhi: As India registered 1,023 deaths due to Covid19 in last 24 hours, union cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba on Thursday reviewed the COVID-19 situation of 10 states and UTs with high case fatality.

Gauba during the meeting has asked all the representatives to control COVID transmission and keep the mortality below 1 per cent.

Chief Secretaries and Health Secretaries of nine states and one union territory including Maharastra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Gujarat, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir were present in the meeting that took place over video conferencing.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhusan has highlighted the need to strengthen approach and strategies relating to testing, contact tracing, surveillance, containment, home isolation, availability of ambulance, hospital beds, oxygen, treatment protocols etc.

It was pointed out that 89 per cent of the total deaths have been reported from these states in the last two weeks.

During the meeting, the states and UTs were asked to ensure a minimum of 140 tests per million per day in all districts while targeting a positivity rate of less than 5 per cent.

The state representatives were asked to put in the public domain the availability of beds and ambulance across COVID facilities while significantly reducing ambulance response time.

Meanwhile, India's COVID cases on Thursday crossed 33 lakh mark with a biggest single-day spike of 75,760 fresh cases and 1023 deaths in last 24 hours.

Statistics show that India at present has 725991 active cases whereas 25,23,771 people have been cured. As many as 60,472 deaths also took place due to the disease till date.

India has conducted a total of 3.9 crore tests till date with 9,24,998 conducted in the last 24 hours. A total of 56,013 people have been recovered in the last 24 hours that took the recovery rate to 76.24 per cent.

Percentage of India's present active case is 21.93 per cent whereas as fatality rate is 1.83 per cent.