New Delhi, May 20, 2020: The India government on May 20 presented statistics comparing India with 15 worst coronavirus affected nations to highlight how the country had fared better on taming Covid-19 pandemic.
According to a health ministry official, the worst affected countries — the United States, Russia, Spain, Brazil, UK, Italy, France, Germany, Turkey, Iran, Peru, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Belgium and Mexico — accounted for 3,645,000 of the world’s 5,047,000 positive cases as on May 20.
They had the combined population of 1.43 billion and accounted for 273,000 deaths from Covid-19. In comparison, India with 1.37 billion people had only 112,000 cases and the death toll of 3,434.
“These combined population of these countries is similar to that of India’s, yet they have recorded 34 times more cases and 83 times more deaths than India,” said Lav Agarwal, joint secretary, health ministry.
“This statistic is not about a satisfactory situation for India. How we medically manage a positive case, how we are able to save a patient’s life and focus on good health care decides if we are doing a satisfactory job,” he added.
Agarwal said that in another relatively-positive news, the recovery rate of coronavirus patients in India, which stood at 7.1 percent at the beginning of the lockdown on March 25, increased to 11.42 percent at the beginning of the second phase of the lockdown and further to 26.59 percent before reaching 39.62 percent as of May 19.
Agarwal said that India had around 61,000 cases of Covid-19 under active treatment and only 2.94 percent of them were on oxygen support, 3 percent on ICU support and 0.4 percent on ventilator support.
“This data is very important to us since it shows that because of our focus on early detection and surveillance leading to timely identification of cases, a very few percentages of infected patients need serious hospital management,” Agarwal said.
Giving an update on the scaling up of the health infrastructure in the view of the pandemic, Agarwal said India currently had 150,000 hospital beds available for treating coronavirus patients. He said that this capacity was built over the last two months during the lockdown. He added that the country’s focus should be on preventive action as long as a vaccine to prevent the spread of the disease is found.
Meanwhile on May 15, with average 3,500 cases daily India rose to the 11th spot among countries with the highest number of reported Covid-19 cases, overtaking the official count of China where the disease began.
Source: The Hindustan Times
Statistical data can be manipulated to prove predetermined results. Actually means nothing.