Coronavirus growth in India linear, not exponential, says govt

New Delhi, Apr 23: The government on Thursday said that the coronavirus growth in India has been more or less linear and not exponential.

Centre also noted that the country's recovery rate of COVID-19 cases has been rising steadily to reach close to 20 per cent with 4,257 people out of total 21,393 infections have been cured so far including 388 who were cured yesterday.

India has fared much better than developed countries like the United States and the UK on this count.

"In this period, we are more or less where we were a month ago. Situation hasn't dipped much. 4 to 4.5 per cent of people are testing positive and around 325 labs (government and private) are testing for the virus," said Balram Bhargava, Director-General of ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research.

As per ICMR data from March 22 (before the lockdown period) 16,109 people were tested and 341 were found to be COVID-19 positive. This translated into an infection rate of 2.11 per cent, which is around half the figure being quoted by the government.

"With increased testing in mind, the government has now authorised 325 labs (government and private) to conduct COVID-19 testing, has over 3,700 dedicated facilities and nearly two lakh isolation beds," Mr Bhargava said, adding that the number of dedicated hospitals had increased 3.5 times in the past month and isolation beds had gone up 3.6 times.

The government also said recovery rates had risen to 19.89 per cent, with 4,257 people being discharged after receiving treatment. The rate, which is the number of people to have recovered from the infection as a percentage of the total number of cases, has been increasing since last week when it was 9.99 per cent.