‘Aim is to bring down case fatality rate to less than 1%’

The aim is to bring down the State’s case fatality rate to less than 1%, Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar said.

During a media interaction after the inspection of a COVID-19 control room, the Minister said that efforts taken in the State had borne results. Tracking, tracing and testing the infected had helped bring down the positivity rate to 6.4%, he said.

According to him, the positivity rate had fallen to less than 10%. The Minister said that this was as per guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research. “Our aim is to bring down the positivity rate to 5%. The case fatality rate was initially at 1.6%, on average. We have managed to reduce it gradually to 1.4%, and this week, it has further come down to 1.2%,” he said.

“From an average of 129 persons losing their lives due to COVID-19 every day, we have reduced the number of people dying of the infection to less than 70. We want to bring down the case fatality rate to less than 1%,” he added.

Dr. Vijayabaskar attributed the improvement in recovery rate, now at 90.2%, to the focus on building medical infrastructure, besides the use of life-saving medicines and treatment modalities adopted by the State.

The State has, so far, spent ₹1,982.9 crore on COVID-19-related activities, including on treatment and the development of infrastructure, he said.