New Delhi: Despite being the second-most populous country in the world, the daily growth rate of novel coronavirus cases in India has been coming down continuously from around 31 per cent in March to 3.24 per cent on July 12, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

Addressing a press briefing, Rajesh Bhushan, officer on special duty in the ministry, said, "There has been a progressive decline in the daily growth rate of new cases."

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"If you see, the daily growth rate in of COVID-19 cases in March was around 31.28 per cent, it declined to around 9 per cent in May and reduced further to 4.82 per cent by the end of May. If you look at the figures as on July 12, it has come down to 3.24 per cent," Mr Bhushan said.

Many times, in a country like India, which has a massive population, the numbers in absolute terms tend to "cloud" the focus of policy makers and the people who are managing public health challenges, according to the official.

"So, it's important that we do not focus on absolute numbers and also see the trend of daily growth rate of cases," he said. "Here we see that the growth rate of daily fresh cases is declining."

With 28,498 fresh cases recorded in a day, India's COVID-19 tally sprinted past nine lakh on Tuesday, just three days after it crossed the eight-lakh mark, according to the ministry data.

The total coronavirus caseload in the country surged to 9,06,752 and the number of deaths mounted to 23,727 with 553 people succumbing to the disease in 24 hours.

According to a PTI tally, the total number of cases is 9,31,101, the number of discharged people is 5,89,015 and the death tally is 24,260.

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