Govt denies community transmission of COVID-19, says India's cases per million less than global average

The government on Thursday reaffirmed that there's no community transmission in India, adding the cases per million in the country are significantly less than the global average.

A Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting was chaired by Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Thursday at Nirman Bhawan in the national capital. The meeting was called to review the coronavirus situation in India.

The meeting reviewed the current status and the actions for the management of the infection.

"We are seeing on TV that India has become the third most COVID-19 affected country. It is necessary to see this in correct perspective, we are a country with the second highest population in the world. 
Our cases per million are 538, while world average is 1,453," Dr Vardhan said.

"During our discussions today, experts again stated that there is no community transmission in India. There may be some localised pockets where transmission is high but as a country, there is no community transmission," he added.

Today, I chaired the 18th high-level #GroupOfMinisters meeting to review, monitor & evaluate the evolving situation on #COVID19
A presentation on the ground situation as well as latest statistics w.r.t. #COVID was made & future strategies drawn up.#GoM @MoHFW_INDIA pic.twitter.com/Ag3u2B6sbX

— Dr Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) July 9, 2020

India's coronavirus tally once again crossed its highest single-day spike with close to 25,000 new cases reported in the last 24 hours. As per data from the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 24,879 new positive cases and 487 deaths in the last 24 hours.

With this, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country has climbed to 7,67,296.

Out of the total number of cases, 2,69,789 are active, 4,76,378 have been cured/discharged/migrated and 21,129 have died.