The Government is set to launch a National Clinical Registry for COVID-19. The main objective of this registry is to collect real-time clinical data which will help in evidence-based clinical practice, research, formulation of guidelines and policymaking.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and All India Institute of Medical Sciences have proposed to establish a COVID-19 clinical registry for data collection from 100 hospitals across the country. The duration of the study will be one year and any COVID-19 lab confirmed and hospitalized patient will be enrolled.

ICMR invited a letter of intent from institutions, hospitals identified as dedicated COVID Hospitals and COVID Health Centres to establish this registry.

This study is aimed at collecting data regarding clinical and laboratory features, treatments and outcomes of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in India.

Meanwhile, the total number of people who have recovered from COVID-19 in the country surpassed the 13.5 lakh mark today. A total of 1378105 people have recovered so far. In the past 24 hour, 49769 recoveries have been reported across the country. With this, the recovery rate has improved to 67.98 per cent.

The Health and Family Welfare Ministry today said, a total of 62538 new cases of coronavirus have been reported in the country within 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 202774. This is the highest number of new cases registered in a single day since the outbreak of COVID-19 in India.

Presently, the total number of active corona cases in the country is 67384. 886 deaths have been reported during the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide toll to 41585. The case fatality rate has further declined to 2.05 per cent in the country.

Additionally, India has tested more than 6 lakh COVID-19 samples for the third consecutive day in a row. India’s resolve to rapidly increase the number of tests done per day has resulted in a successful march towards 10 lakh per day testing capacity with 664949 tests conducted in the last 24 hours.

The Tests Per Million to have seen a sharp rise to more than sixteen thousand. A key component for the successful implementation of the “Test, Track and Treat” strategy has been the continuously expanding network of diagnostic labs across the country. The lab network as of today consists of 1370 labs. These consist of 921 labs in the government sector and 449 private labs.

Coronavirus is continuing its spread across the world, with more than 19 million confirmed cases in 188 countries. More than 700,000 people have lost their lives.

Cases of the disease are continuing to surge in many countries, while others which had apparent success in suppressing initial outbreaks are now seeing infections rise again.

The World Health Organization's (WHO) special envoy David Nabarro told the BBC that the virus is capable of "surging back really quickly" and is "returning all the time".