COVID Recovery Rate At 25.19%, Major Improvement From 14 Days Ago: Centre

India's coronavirus recovery rate - the share of people who have been discharged from hospital after treatment - has risen to 25.13 per cent, a significant improvement over 13 per cent reported 14 days ago, the Health Ministry said on Thursday. The doubling rate of COVID-19 cases has also improved to 11 days from 3.4 days before the nationwide lockdown, they said.

A total of 8,324 patients have recovered, officials said. In last 24 hours, 1,718 new cases of COVID-19 reported, taking total number of cases to 33,050 including 1,074 deaths, they added.

The current fatality rate is 3.2 per cent for COVID-19 in India with 65 per cent of those dead males and 35 per cent females, the Health Ministry said.

Addressing the daily press briefing, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said the doubling rate of COVID-19 cases was found to be between 11-20 days in Delhi, UP, Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Punjab.

In Karnataka, Ladakh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Kerala the doubling rate is between 20-40 days, he added.

Health officials say the ongoing nationwide lockdown since March 25 has prevented an explosive surge of infections that would have crippled the country's health care system and slowed down the spread.

"Our analysis finds that the rate of growth in positive cases and fatalities has been consistently lower - linear but non-exponential," said Amitabh Kant, chief executive of the government think tank Niti Aayog.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to decide soon whether to extend the shutdown beyond May 3. Government sources say restrictions will continue in the worst-hit districts while they may be eased in areas where there are no cases.

The big cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad - which are also India's economic growth engines - top the list of cases and there are no signs of the pandemic abating there, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said.

Still, the scale of the outbreak is dwarfed by the United States or large western European countries where thousands have died since the virus spread across the world after emerging in China's Wuhan late last year.