COVID-19: India records more than 4.2 lakh tests in a single day, fatality rate declines

This elevated number comes on the heels of 3,50,000 tests having been done very day consistently over the last one week.

The government also said India's fatality rate due to COVID19 has further dropped to 2.35 percent.

"India has one of the lowest fatality rates in the world," the Indian government said.

"With 4,20,898 samples tested in the last 24 hours, the Tests Per Million (TPM) has further increased to 11,485 and cumulative testing to 1,58,49,068. Both continue to maintain the upward trend," read a government statement.

A strong factor contributing to this achievement is the persistent increase in the number of labs from merely one in January 2020 to 1301 today, inclusive of 902 government labs and 399 in the private sector.

Revised facilitative guidelines of testing by ICMR and all-round efforts by the governments have also aided in widespread testing.

The Union Government has advised all State/UT governments to keep up the strategy of “Test, Track and Treat” with aggressive testing which may lead to higher number of daily positive cases initially but would eventually achieve a decline as has been demonstrated after Union Government’s targeted efforts in the NCT of Delhi.

32,223 COVID patients have recovered in the last 24 hours.

The cumulative  number of recovered cases has reached 8,49,431 today.

The recovery rate has achieved another high of 63.54%.

The gap between recovered patients and active COVID-19 cases has further increased to 3,93,360.