India crossed the one-crore mark in Covid-19 recoveries on Wednesday — becoming the first country in the world to report more than 10 million cured patients — even as daily fresh cases were more than 20,000 for the first time in the last seven days.
With 19,694 discharges from hospitals on Wednesday, the number of patients cured reached 1,00,15,925, which translates to a recovery rate of 96.3%. But, with the pandemic slowing down with daily cases declining in the last three months, the pace of recoveries, too, has slowed down as discharges from hospitals appear to have reached a saturation point. While it took 18 days to breach the eight-million mark of recoveries on November 10 from the previous seven-million mark, the next one million recoveries were recorded after 23 days on December 3. And, it took longer — 34 days — to breach the next one million mark with recoveries crossing one crore on Wednesday.
Health ministry data shows that starting from 11% when India reported 1000 recoveries, there has been a steady increase in the recovery rate. By June 3, over a lakh Indians had recovered. By the end of September — the month that saw India’s peak of daily cases —over five million Indians had recovered.