India faring better than other countries at the 5L-test mark: Committee chief

NEW DELHI: Though the number of Covid-19 patients in India is rising, the graph is linear and not exponential and could indicate a flattening of the curve as the country’s positive rate remains largely unchanged at 4.5% of those tested even as number of tests conducted daily since March 23 has risen consistently crossing 5,00,000 overall on Wednesday. As of now, on an average more than 35,000 tests are conducted daily.

The government on Thursday said India’s case positivity average is 4.5%, even as testing increased 33 times in the last 30 days. On March 23, 14,915 samples had been tested and the number crossed half a million on April 22. The charts were shared by the empowered committee on testing and health infrastructure for Covid-19 headed by environment secretary C K Mishra.

“The growth of Covid-19 cases has been more or less linear and not exponential; this indicates that the strategies we adopted have succeeded in containing the infection to a particular level,” said Mishra, who said the positivity rate, higher number of tests and comparisons with other nations a