India has seen a significant drop in the COVID-19 fatality rate to 2.43 percent from 3.36 percent on June 17. The Ministry of Health and Welfare addressing a media briefing on Tuesday said this has been achieved due to effective clinical management of coronavirus cases, while adding that handling of the pandemic has been done "relatively well".

Rajesh Bhushan, Officer on Special Duty in the Union Health Ministry, said the national average for the COVID-19 positivity rate currently stands at 8.07 percent with thirty states and Union Territories registering lower percentages. He further said, "19 states and UTs are performing more than 140 tests per day per million population. Just doing tests is not enough, they have to be done at a level of 140 tests per day per million so that the rate of positivity reduces and comes down to 10 per cent first and then continue the testing process so that the rate of positivity further reduces to 5 per cent or lower,". He then went on to add saying, "So that is the ultimate aim to maintain this level of testing and bring positivity lower to 5 per cent eventually or even lower than that,".

Mr Bhushan spoke about the deaths in the country due to COVID-19 saying the casualties in India per million population stands at 20.4 million, which is amongst lowest in the world. He said, "There are several countries where the deaths per million is 21 times or 33 times higher than in India. The global average stands at 77 deaths per million population,".

He added, "So far, the nation has managed COVID-19 relatively well. The Government of India is cooperating with all states and UTs. All decisions are being taken based on science and evidence-based inputs and in consultation with domain knowledge experts,". 

The past 24 hours have seen more than 37,724 fresh coronavirus cases around the country, with 648 deaths linked to the disease. India’s total number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 1,192,915 as on Wednesday, the Health Ministry's data showed. It is to be noted that India has recorded 607,422 new cases in 22 days while 256,734 fresh cases were added in just eight days.