The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare on Tuesday during its interaction with the media said that it is wrong to make a judgment about the country's efforts in containing the novel coronavirus with the number of positive cases alone. More than 1,98,000 Indians have tested positive since the COVID-19 outbreak leading the country to climb the charts to the seventh spot overall in the worst-affected nations on the planet. The Union Health Ministry stated that a balanced view can be acquired only when data of nations worst-affected are compared with a combined population similar to India.

Health Ministry's Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said, "If we look at 14 countries with a combined population similar to India then we find that even today, they have reported 22.5% more positive cases and 55.2 times more deaths,". He went on to add saying India has fared much better in comparison to the world in terms of the recovery and fatality rates. Agarwal stated, "The fatality rate in our country is 2.82%, one of the lowest—compared to the world average of 6.13%,".

Lav Agarwal emphasized on the country's approach to better disease management and said that a majority of fatalities were among a particular age and in those who had pre-existing health conditions. He said, "One in every two Coved-19 deaths in India has been from the senior citizen population, who constitute 10% of our total population. 73% of India’s Covid-19 fatalities are cases of comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, heart and respiratory diseases,". Pointing to the success as due to various focus areas in the containment efforts, Mr. Agarwal said, "Early case identification, clinical management, surveillance, contact tracing; these efforts have helped us improve our fatality rate to 2.82%,". As per the latest data, more than 95,500 people made a recovery and were discharged taking the recovery rate to 48.07%.