Addressing a press conference, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said: “Herd immunity is an indirect protection from a disease. In a country the size of India, it cannot be a strategic choice or option. It can only be achieved through immunisation but that is in the future.”
He said that the ministry, too, believes it is important to adopt Covid appropriate behaviour.
The remarks came at a time India has logged over 1.5mn coronavirus cases and continues to have the fastest growth rate of infection.
The ministry again reiterated that there is no community spread in the country, and that there are merely clusters of cases and pockets of localised transmission.
Bhushan said that as many as 1mn people have recovered till now and the recovery rate is increasing.”In April first week, the rate of recovery was 7.85%, in June, it increased to 48.31% and 64.44% in July. Recoveries are 1.9 times the number of active cases.”
As many as 16 states and UTs have a recovery rate more than the national average of 64.44%.
The highest number of recovered patients are in Delhi, Ladakh, Haryana, Assam, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.
Besides this, there is a decrease in the percentage of active cases and deaths due to Covid-19, the health secretary said, adding that effective clinical management has led to a decrease in case fatality rate.
”In June, it was 3.33% and now it is 2.21% and is continuously decreasing.”
“If compared to other countries, the case fatality rate is 2.21%. Barring Russia, all the major countries have a case fatality rate six-seven times more than India.
“It is the lowest in the world as compared to the developed western countries or neighbourhood countries.” As many as 24 states and UTs have a lower case fatality rate than the national average.
Out of this, eight states — Assam, Kerala, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Goa and Jharkhand have less than 1% rate.
Bhushan said that testing infrastructure has also increased and almost 10mn tests were conducted in the span of the last one month.
“In the first week of July, cumulative numbers were 8.8mn and now 1,81,90,382 tests have been done.”
Meanwhile, there are 21 states where positivity rate, or the percentage of people who test positive compared to the overall number tested, is less than 10%.
Quoting WHO, Bhushan said there are 24 vaccine candidates which are in clinical evaluation in the world and there are 141 vaccine candidates in pre-evaluation stage.