Rohit Shishodia
India, on Saturday morning, reported its highest one day spike by 11458 corona cases in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of officially declared cases of the virus in the country so far to 308993.

As per the Indian Health Ministry data released in the morning on June 13, 2020, reported deaths due to coronavirus surged to 386 in the past twenty four hours.

The total number of coronavirus deaths in the country has now reached 8894. As many as 154330 out of the 308993 patients have recovered from the virus while 145779 out of 308993 are active cases of the virus, again officially.

However, this official data for the number of cases and of recoveries in the country is a mere tally of the number whose tests have been positive.

As per a serological survey done by the ICMR, corona infections in India at 0.73% of the population in districts in April ran into several million. That renders these official figures somewhat meaningless making the fatalities number a more pertinent data and the attempt would be to keep the deaths down.

Significantly, the ICMR has also indicated that the fatality rate of the disease in India is very low at 0.08%. This means that tens of millions in India have had the virus and have recovered in the past months. It also means that out of every 1200 people who get corona, overwhelmingly without their knowledge, only one dies of corona.

Let us count our blessings and hope that the ICMR right in analyzing the data.