The Covid-19 fatality rate in India has been showing a sustained decline and has further dropped to 1.44 per cent due to focused efforts of the Centre, states and Union Territories on effective clinical management of the hospitalised cases, the Union Health Ministry said on Sunday.
With effective containment strategy, aggressive testing and standardised clinical management protocols based on a holistic standard of care protocol across government and private hospitals, the number of new deaths has dipped, it stated.
"Less than 300 new Covid-19 deaths are being recorded in the country for the last 16 days," the ministry said.
As part of the Covid-19 management and response policy, there has been a sharp focus of the Centre on not only containing the viral disease but also to reduce deaths and to save lives by providing quality clinical care to the critical and severely diseased patients.
Collaborative efforts of the Centre, states and UTs have resulted in the strengthening of health facilities across the country, the health ministry said.
"India has one of the lowest deaths per million population (109). Countries like Russia, Germany, Brazil, France, the USA, the UK and Italy have much higher deaths per million population," it said.
The total number of recovered cases in the country has surged to 10,075,950 and the national recovery rate has improved to 96.42 per cent.
India's current active caseload of 2,23,335 was just 2.14 per cent of its total cases. Recovery of 19,299 patients in 24 hours has led a decline of 855 cases from the total Covid-19 active caseload.
Maharashtra recorded the maximum positive change with an addition of 1,123 cases, whereas Rajasthan shows maximum negative change with a reduction of 672 cases.
Ten states and UTs contributed 79.12 per cent of the new recovered cases.
Kerala saw 5,424 people recovering from Covid-19 in a day, followed by 2,401 in Maharashtra and 1,167 in Uttar Pradesh.
Also, 10 states and UTs have contributed 82.25 per cent of the 18,645 new cases recorded in a day across India. Kerala reported 5,528 new cases in the last 24 hours, followed by Maharashtra 3,581 and Chhattisgarh reported 1,014.
The ministry said that 73.63 per cent of the 201 fatalities reported in a span of 24 hours were from seven states and UTs. Maharashtra reported the maximum 57 deaths, followed by 22 in Kerala and 20 in West Bengal.