The Health Ministry has said that the COVID-19 recoveries have crossed the one-million mark in the country. Briefing the media in New Delhi yesterday, the Officer of Special Duty in the Health Ministry said, the recovery rate among COVID-19 patients increased from 7.85 per cent in April to 64.44 per cent at present.

He said the recoveries are 1.9 times the number of active cases of COVID-19. The Health Ministry Official said effective clinical management led to a decline in the COVID-19 case fatality rate from 3.33 per cent on 18th June to 2.21 percent yesterday. He said, due to enhanced testing infrastructure, on an average 468263 COVID-19 tests conducted daily from 26th to 30th July.

India has achieved another landmark with more than 6 lakh tests done in 24 hours. The Health Ministry said it is continuing to implement the strategy of comprehensive testing, tracking and treatment to effectively tackle the COVID19 pandemic. It said, the objective is to raise the testing capacity to 10 lakhs tests per day in the medium term.

Meanwhile, Phase Five of the Vande Bharat Mission is scheduled to start from the first of August. Under Phase Four of the Vande Bharat Mission, a total of 1197 flights have been scheduled so far. These include 945 international flights and 252 feeder flights.

These flights were operated by the Air India group, Indigo, Spicejet and Go Air and cover 29 countries. They have repatriated nearly one lakh of people. This phase is expected to continue until 2nd August. He said they expect another 80 thousand people to be repatriated by that time.

IN PHASE 5 a total of 792 flights which include 692 international flights and 100 domestic flights have been scheduled under this phase to repatriate Indians from 23 countries. These include GCC countries, the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, China, Israel, and Kyrgyzstan.

Briefing media this evening, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, these flights would cater to 21 different airports in India and repatriate a total of one lakh thirty thousand Indians stranded abroad. A total of 878921 Indian nationals have returned till yesterday so far under the Mission. Of these, 107452 Indians have returned from Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Pakistan and Bangladesh through land borders.