Daily growth rate of coronavirus cases declined to 3.24%: Government

Despite being the second-most populous country in the world, the daily growth rate of novel coronavirus cases in India has been coming down continuously from around 31 percent in March to 3.24 percent on July 12, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

Addressing a press briefing, Rajesh Bhushan, officer on special duty in the ministry, said: "There has been a progressive decline in the daily growth rate of new cases."

"If you see, the daily growth rate in of Covid-19 cases in March was around 31.28 percent, it declined to around 9 percent in May and reduced further to 4.82 percent by the end of May. If you look at the figures as on July 12, it has come down to 3.24 percent," Bhushan said.

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Many a time, in a country like India, which has a massive population, the numbers in absolute terms tend to "cloud" the focus of policymakers and the people who are managing public health challenges, according to the official.

"So, it's important that we do not focus on absolute numbers and also see the trend of the daily growth rate of cases," he said. "Here we see that the growth rate of daily fresh cases is declining."

With 28,498 fresh cases recorded in a day, India's Covid-19 tally sprinted past nine lakh on Tuesday, just three days after it crossed the eight-lakh mark, according to the ministry data.

The total coronavirus caseload in the country surged to 9,06,752 and the death toll mounted to 23,727 with 553 people succumbing to the disease in 24 hours.

According to a PTI tally, the total number of cases is 9,31,101, the number of discharged people is 5,89,015 and the death tally is 24,260.