NEW DELHI: The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases reached 3,20, 922 in the country on Sunday morning with 11, 929 fresh cases detected — highest for the day — within 24 hours.
The virus toll has now reached 9,195 in India with 311 more deaths reported overnight. The case fatality rate due to the infection which was 2.8 per cent for last several days also shot up marginally to 2.9 per cent on Sunday morning.
Of the new deaths reported in a day, 113 were from Maharashtra, followed by 57 in Delhi, 33 in Gujarat and 30 in Tamil Nadu.
The Ministry of Health in a daily bulletin said that with 8,049 patients cured in the last 24 hours, the recovery rate has crossed 50 per cent and now stands at 50.6 per cent. Currently, 1,49,348 active cases are under medical supervision.
In a separate statement, the ministry also clarified that Ebola drug remdesivir has been included as an “investigational therapy” only for restricted emergency use on COVID-19 patients — as indicated in the revised clinical management protocol issued on Saturday.
The ministry said that the medicine—unavailable in India as of now — is being permitted for restricted emergency use along with off label use of immune suppressive drug tocilizumab, convalescent Plasma.
The statement underlined that use of these therapies is based on limited available evidence and limited availability at present. “Use of remdesivir under emergency use may be considered in patients with moderate disease (those on oxygen) but with no specified contraindications. This drug has still not been approved (market authorization) by the US Food and Drug Administration, where like India it continues only under an emergency use authorization,” said the release.
“Written informed consent of each patient required, results of additional clinical trials to be submitted, active surveillance data of all treated patients to be submitted, risk management plan along with active post-marketing surveillance and reporting of serious adverse events also to be submitted. Additionally, the first three batches of imported consignments are to be tested and reports submitted to the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation,” it said.