The Union Health Ministry has said that the country is witnessing a steady decline in number of daily new reported cases of COVID -19 from the past 20 days after reaching a peak on 7th May.
Addressing the media on Thursday, Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry Lav Aggarwal said that on 7th May over 4 lakh 14 thousand cases were reported which has now come down to about 2 lakh 11 thousand.
Mr Aggarwal said, in the last three weeks, the number of districts reporting more than 100 cases on a daily basis has also come down from 531 to 359 districts.
He also informed that number of Active cases has now come down to 8.84 per cent from the level of 17.13 per cent while the recovery rate has improved to 90 per cent from the level of 81.8 per cent on 3rd May.
He informed that in the last 17 days, the country has reported a decline of around 13 lakh active cases and now it stood at the level of 24 lakh 19 thousand.
Mr Aggarwal also added that there are 24 States in the country which are reporting a decline in number of active cases in the last one week.
On testing of COVID samples, the Joint Secretary said that for early identification, the government has increased the number of testing in the past 15 weeks, and it is increased by 3.1 times across the country.
He said, the country has recorded the highest ever more than 22 lakh 17 thousand tests for COVID 19 yesterday.
In reply to a question, Mr Aggarwal clarified that the media report on an estimate of COVID cases and deaths is totally baseless and is absolutely false.
He said, the estimate is not supported by evidence. He said, we have a robust system for reporting and registration of deaths.
During the briefing, NITI Aayog Member Dr V K Paul said that the second wave of the pandemic is stabilising in most parts of the country.
He said, the number of active cases and positivity rate is declining.
On Vaccination, Dr Paul said that the pace of vaccination has picked up to some extent and the government is making very significant efforts to ramp up the production of Make In India Vaccine.
He said, by the end of July , there will be the availability of 51.6 crore doses of vaccine.
He informed that Bharat Biotech which started with around 90 lakh doses per month production capacity is expected to be able to ramp it up to around 10 Crore doses per month by September and October.
He said, Serum Institute is also ramping up from 6.5 crore doses per month to around 11 crore or more in coming months.
Dr Paul said, the government is also reaching out to international manufacturers like Pfizer to make available vaccine.
On the issue of reported cases of being given second dose of other vaccine than the first dose, Dr Paul said, the protocol is clear that the first and second dose should be of the same vaccine.
He, however said that there should be perhaps no adverse effect if second dose is of different vaccine.
Dr Paul appealed to the healthcare workers to keep in mind that both doses of the same vaccine are provided to the beneficiaries.