The government today said that the daily positivity rate of COVID-19 is continuously declining and has been less than 3 percent from 23rd December to 5th January.

Briefing media in New Delhi, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said, average recovered cases exceeded the average daily new cases for the last 5 weeks.

He said, active cases are less than 2.5 lakhs after 6 months and declining.

Mr. Bhushan said, the daily number of deaths less than 300 for 11 consecutive days.

He said, cumulative positivity rate is 5.87 percent and the positivity rate during the last week was 1.97 percent.

The Health Secretary said, only 43.96 percent of the total active cases of COVID19 are under treatment in health-care facilities, and on the other hand, 56.04 percent of the active cases are very mild or asymptomatic.

He said, cases per million of population till now, India has amongst the lowest in the world. Mr. Bhushan said India has around 7 thousand per million cases, while other countries are crossing the 20 thousand mark.

He said India is still among the lowest in the world in terms of active cases and deaths per million population.

He added that active cases per million in India is 167 and deaths per million is 108.

Speaking on the vaccine, the Union Health Secretary said, there are four primary vaccine stores called GMSD located in Karnal, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata and there are 37 vaccine stores in the country. They store vaccines in bulk and distribute them further.

He said healthcare workers and frontline workers would not need to register themselves as a beneficiary as their data is the bulk database that has been populated on the Co-WIN vaccine delivery management system in a bulk manner.

Mr. Bhushan informed that based on the feedback of dry-run, Government is ready to introduce the COVID-19 vaccine within 10 days from the date of emergency use authorization.