India on Thursday registered its highest-ever spike of the coronavirus disease cases. According to Union health ministry update, the country recorded 75,760 new cases of Covid-19, which pushed the nationwide tally to over 3.31 million.
The number of active cases in the country are 7,25,991, while 25,23,771 patients have been discharged. The country also recorded 1,023 fatalities in the last 24 hours which pushed the death toll to 60,472, according to health ministry data.The health ministry had said on Wednesday that the total number of Covid-19 recoveries in India exceeds the active cases of the infection by 3.5 times and the recovery rate is over 76 per cent.The record high recoveries have ensured that the number of active cases of Covid-19, which is the “actual caseload” of the country, comprises only 21.87 per cent of the total cases, it highlighted.
The ministry recommended that all newly-diagnosed tuberculosis patients or those currently on treatment should be tested for Covid-19 and vice versa. It said that tuberculosis is associated with a 2.1-fold increased risk of a severe Covid-19 disease.
The prevalence of tuberculosis among Covid-19 patients has been found to be 0.37 to 4.47 per cent in different studies, the ministry said and highlighted that there has been an overall decline in tuberculosis notification by 26 per cent during January to June, as compared to the previous year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Rajesh Bhushan, Union health secretary, had said on Wednesday that the testing for the disease has been increased from 363 tests per million per day on August 1 to more than 600 tests per million per day at present, with India having tested nearly 3.7 crore cumulative Covid-19 samples so far.
On Wednesday, 67,151 people had tested positive for the infection.