With 991 new cases of the coronavirus disease in the last 24 hours, India’s tally is at 14,378 and the Covid-19 related death has risen to 480, the Union health ministry said on Saturday morning.
Among the number of infected, most are in Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, according to the health ministry data at 8am.
Out of the 14,378 Covid-19 cases in the country, 1992 people have also been cured, discharged or migrated as the country is in the second phase of lockdown.
The April 14-deadline was extended to May 3 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week.
The Union health ministry has said the nationwide lockdown of 21 days and the subsequent extension has helped in containing the spread infection. It said the doubling rate in India has gone from 3 to 6.2 days during the period.
“The doubling rate in 19 states and Union territories are even lower than average doubling rate,” Lav Aggarwal, joint secretary with the health ministry, said during the daily news briefing on Friday.
“Kerala, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Ladakh, Puducherry, Delhi, Bihar, Odisha, TN, Andhra Pradesh, UP, Punjab, Assam, Tripura all have low doubling rates of coronavirus cases,” Aggarwal added.
He also said that the ratio between Covid-19 patients who have recovered and those who have died stands at 80:20 in the country, which is higher than that of several other countries suffering due to the health crisis.
The health ministry has also said that containment operations will be scaled down if no secondary case of Covid-19 is reported from a quarantine zone for at least four weeks after the last confirmed test has been isolated and all his contacts have been followed up for 28 days.
According to the ministry’s Updated containment plan for large outbreaks COVID-19, a containment operation or a large outbreak or cluster is considered to be over 28 days from the date the last case in that zone tests negative.
The closing of the surveillance for the clusters could be independent of one another provided there is no geographic continuity between clusters. However, the surveillance will continue for severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) and influenza-like illness (ILI).
The Centre has declared 170 Covid-19 hotspots—123 hotspot districts with large outbreaks and 47 hotspot districts with clusters. Besides, it has identified 207 non-hotspot districts with clusters.
The health ministry said in its updated containment plan for large outbreaks that India is preparing for a ‘scenario-based approach’ in tackling the coronavirus disease.
The Covid-19 dashboard by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) shows there are 2,243,512 confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease and that 154,209 people have died across the world.
