Aday after the country saw massive spike in cases, the Government said despite rise in the number, the rate of doubling has slowed down to 7.4 per cent. The Union Healthy Ministry, however, said the Covid-19 situation was “especially serious” in Mumbai, Pune, Indore, Jaipur and Kolkata.
The Ministry did not mention it, but numbers of cases have also soared in Ahmedabad touching 1,252, far higher than Pune (591 cases), Jaipur (578) and Indore (841).
The total number of confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in India is 17,656, with 559 deaths so far, according to data made available by the Ministry. However, figures collected from the States showed 18,450 cases and 586 deaths.
Of these 14,810 are active cases of Covid-19, 3,020 persons have recovered and discharged from hospital, one person migrated to another country and 577 people succumbed to the disease.
“The doubling rate of Covid-19 cases calculated using growth over the past seven days indicates that Indiavs doubling rate for the week before lockdown was 3.4 per cent and has improved to 7.5 as on April 19 for the last seven days,” said Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal at a routine presser here.
Doubling rate slows down to 7.4 days
He said the States and UTs where the doubling duration s less than 20 days are Delhi where it is doubling in 8.5 days, Karnataka in 9.2 days, Telangana 9.4 days, Andhra Pradesh 10.6 days, Jammu & Kashmir 11.5 days, Punjab 13.1 days, Chattisgarh 13.3 days, Tamil Nadu 14 days and Bihar 16.4 days.
Places where the doubling time is between 20 days to 30 days include Andaman and Nicobar Island where it was 20.1 days. In Haryana, the cases are doubling in 21 days, in Himachal Pradesh 24.5 days, Chandigarh 25.4 days, Assam 25.8 days, Uttarakhand 26.6 days and Ladakh 26.6 days.
States with doubling time more than 30 days are Odisha and Kerala which reported doubling time as 39.8 days and 72.2 days respectively, Agarwal said.
Apart from Mahe in Puducherry and Kodagu in Karnataka, Pauri Garhwal district from Uttarakhand too have not reported any fresh case of coronavirus infection during last 28 days, he said.
There are 59 districts in 23 States and UTs where no case has been reported in the last 14 days, said Agarwal.
At the Press conference, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) head scientist Dr R Gangakhedkar said RTPCR kits are US FDA approved and have good standards and these should be stored under 20-degree temperature for better result.
Dr Gangakhedkar said, “We have received a grievance that in West Bengal, RTPCR kits are not working properly. These kits are US FDA approved and have good standards. Only thing is that these should be stored under 20 degrees temperature. Otherwise, results may not be correct.”
He said the kit used at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) will be provided to West Bengal Government for a temporary period.
“We have informed the West Bengal Government that the kit used in NIV is capable of conducting 10,000 tests and are present in Kolkata. We will provide that kit to the government for a temporary period,” said Gangakhedkar.
Agarwal also expressed concern over the news of some journalists in Mumbai testing positive for the virus and said when they attend their call of duty, they should take the required precautions. “Follow the norms of social distancing and wear face masks,” Agarwal said.