India reported more than 3,500 cases of the coronavirus cases (Covid-19 ) in the last 24 hours, taking the country’s tally of infections to 74,281, according to the Union health ministry said on Wednesday.
The health ministry’s dashboard showed there were 47,480 Covid-19 patients in the country and 2,415 fatalities on Wednesday morning, the 50th day of the country-wide lockdown.
It also said that 24,385 people have recovered from the deadly disease across the country pushing the recovery rate to 32.82%. On Tuesday, the number of cured people was 22,454.
More than 4.2 million people have been infected by Sars-Cov-2, the virus which causes Covid-19, and 291,942 have died across the world.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that the next phase of India’s lockdown, from May 18, will be entirely new, in a new form and with new rules, to fight Covid-19 as well as move ahead to meet other national objectives.
“Experts and scientists have told us that the coronavirus is here to stay in our lives for a long time. But, at the same time, we cannot let our lives revolve only around the virus. We will wear masks, we will abide by social distancing, but we will not get distracted from our goals,” PM Modi said during his address to the nation on Tuesday night.
The PM said, that is why, the new phase of the lockdown, Lockdown 4.0, would have new contours and will be based on new rules.
As the number of coronavirus disease cases spurted in recent weeks, India has scaled up its Covid-19 testing capacity to 100,000 samples a day, which is nearly three weeks earlier than the Union health ministry’s initial May-end target.
“…the testing capacity has increased in the country and it is 1 00,000 tests per day with 347 Government laboratories and 137 private laboratories. Cumulatively, 1,7 62,840 tests have been done so far for Covid-19. Whereas, 86,191 samples were tested yesterday,” health minister Harsh Vardhan said in a statement on Tuesday.
“In view of the surge of returning migrant labourers, States/UTs need to focus on more effective surveillance, contact tracing, adequate testing and timely treatment of all the returnees. This also includes the ones that shall be returning from abroad,” Harsh Vardhan said.
The states have been directed to ramp up surveillance for Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI)/Influenza Like Illness (ILI) in the affected and non-affected districts and take the help of government medical colleges if required.
“Such measures will help to indicate the presence of any possible hidden infection at an early stage,” he said.
The ministry, along with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), is also conducting a community-based sero-survey to estimate the prevalence of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, infection within households in 69 districts of 21 states.
“The survey is coordinated by ICMR’s National Institute of Epidemiology (NIE) and National Institute of Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT), Chennai. This household-level cross-sectional survey will cover 24,000 adults distributed equally across four strata of districts categorized on the basis of reported cases of Covid-19,” ICMR said in a statement.
The survey will involve the collection of venous blood samples from 400 randomly selected individuals (one per household) from 10 clusters in each district.
