New Delhi (TIP): India’s daily cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) remained below 50,000 for the sixth consecutive day on Friday, Nov 13, with the 44,879 cases and 547 fatalities reported in the last 24 hours. According to latest figures released by the Union ministry of health and family welfare, the nation’s infection tally has reached 8,728,795, the active caseload however, remained below 4.9 lakh.
The declining active cases and the steady rise in the number of recoveries from the disease continue to bind hopes of the citizens. As many as 8,115,580 people have recovered from the viral infection either in Covid-19 designated hospitals or in home isolation.
Earlier in the day, the health ministry credited the high levels of testing across states to the drop in coronavirus cases. “Comprehensive & high TESTING is pivotal in the strategy to curb the chain of transmission,” the ministry wrote on Twitter.
It added that from very few tests conducted in January, India has now scaled a high of more than 12 crore total tests in November. According to a graph shared alongside the tweet, on an average 11,03,398 tests for the coronavirus disease were conducted daily in the country in the past six weeks.
“With daily capacity of 15L tests, more than 11L tests were done on an average every day in the past 6 weeks,” the Union ministry tweeted, adding that such comprehensive testing leads to early identification, quick isolation, timely hospitalisation and effective treatment of Covid-19 patients. These eventually result in decreased positivity rate and low fatality rate, it said.
As several vaccines are under different levels of trials in the country, Pune-based Serum Institute of India on Thursday announced that it has completed the enrolment of phase 3 clinical trials for its candidate Covishield and added that the trials of the Oxford vaccine have shown promising results, which “so far give confidence that Covishield could be a realistic solution to the deadly pandemic”.
Meanwhile, the confirmed cases of Covid-19 have climbed to 52,678,681 while 1,292,228 have died of the disease. The United States continues to report the maximum number of cases at 10,543,486, according to Johns Hopkins University’s dashboard.