NEW DELHI: The government on Tuesday said reassuring signals were emerging in the fight against COVID-19 but this was no time to lower the guard.
The Health Ministry today said despite record rise in testing over the past days, average weekly positivity rate of the infection has declined from 10.03 per cent in the first week of July to 7.72 per cent between August 12 and 18.
Disease trends further show reducing trends since August 13 in active new cases (which fell from 64,000 on August 13 to 55,000 on August 17) and reducing trends even in absolute deaths which fell from 1,007 fatalities in a day on August 13 to 876 yesterday.
“A satisfying picture is emerging in that there is a downward trend since five days on active daily cases and absolute deaths but five days is a very short time in the life of any pandemic to say anything with surety. While satisfying signs are visible there is no reason to slacken the guard,” Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said, adding that the top achievement of the last week was India reaching a three crore cumulative testing mark with record tests of 8,99,864 in the last 24 hours.
Bhushan said the fact that average weekly COVID positivity in India was declining despite rising tests was reassuring and aggressive testing was key to disease control.
Member (Health), NITI Aayog, VK Paul while noting that India’s hold on pandemic control was intact said this hold could loosen if people became callous and started attending large gathering and shunning masks.
On vaccines Paul, who heads the India expert COVID vaccine administration group, said the three vaccines under trial in India were on track and the government had asked the manufacturers to share pricing expectations and also share their production capacities.
Paul said no timeline could be given as to when a vaccine would be ready but progress was satisfactory.
He said while the Oxford vaccine would enter phase 3 human trials tomorrow, the two indigenous vaccines were in phase 1 and 2 trials.