Coronavirus cases saw a huge spike (1,670) on Thursday even as the Centre asserted the rise in cases has been linear, not exponential.
The day saw Maharashtra recording the biggest ever a single day gain of 778 cases, followed by Gujarat which added 217 cases. With 40 new deaths, countrywide toll stood at 721.
Despite claims by the Government that rise was linear the picture emerging from Maharashtra is worrisome. The State has now overall 6,427 cases and 283 deaths. Gujarat has also seen a manifold surge during the last one week with total count of positive cases reaching 2,624 and a death count of 112.
Delhi continued to be placed on the third rank with a total of 2,376 cases and 50 deaths. The day saw the national Capital adding 128 new cases. Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh added 49 and 100 cases to be among the worst affected States with total of 1,937 and 1,687 respectively.
Uttar Pradesh tally of cororna positive reached 1,510 with 8 patients found in Bahraich and 13 in Kanpur on Thursday. Andhra Pradesh also saw a rising trend with addition of 80 cases for a total count of 895 cases and 237 deaths.
However, the Government pointed out that the country is experiencing 4.5 per cent positive cases among the tested people, which is similar to the situation a month ago before the lockdown was imposed.
CK Mishra, who is chairman of Empowered Group 2, said, “On March 23, we had done 14,915 tests across the country and on April 22, we did more than 5 lakh tests, and as per a rough calculation, we have scaled up nearly 33 times in 30 days. This is not enough and we need to consistently ramp up testing.”
Talking to reporters here, Mishra said, “Our focus is on the districts now. The way positive cases moved in India, the growth is more or less linear and not exponential. Certain strategies are in work to contain it to a particular level. Beyond this, looking at the story of positive cases in these 30 days, we are more or less in the same position where we were one month ago. India’s positivity rate has remained 4.5 per cent, despite a 24-fold increase in testing.”
He insisted that through the lockdown, the Government has been able to minimise the spread of the viral infection, cut the transmission rate and increase the number of days in doubling of the cases.
Mishra said India has done better than majority of the developing countries, except South Korea, with respect to the percentage of tested cases yielding positive results.
“During the 30 days of lockdown, we have been able to cut transmission, minimise spread and increase the doubling time of Covid-19, consistently ramp up our testing and utilise our time to prepare for the future,” added Mishra.
“No new case of Covid-19 was reported from 78 districts in the last 14 days. A total of 388 patients were cured in one day, the recovery rate is 19.89 per cent. There are 33 new districts in nine states from where no new case was reported in the last 14 days,” said Luv Agarwal, Joint Secretary at the Union Health Ministry.
“The lockdown period has been used gainfully to review, assess and expand our hospital infrastructure and preparedness; our effort has been to use resources and be over-prepared,” said Mishra.
He added that the country’s first goal with regard to hospitalisation has been to ensure that the minimum number of people needs to go to the hospital. The second goal is to ensure enough infrastructure so that every person who needs to go to the hospital is treated well, cured and sent back. Every district in the country is now working towards that, he added.
He said the number of dedicated hospitals increased 3.5 times since last month and the number of isolation beds increased 3.6 times since March.
As on today, 12 districts have not reported any fresh case for the past 28 days and 78 districts have not reported any new case in the last 14 days. In last 24 hours 1,409 positive cases have been reported, which takes our total confirmed cases to 21,393, said Agarwal.
A total of 500,542 samples from 485,172 individuals have been tested as on April 23, said ICMR. Globally, 2,657,611 people have so far been infected, of whom 185,318 have died, according to Worldometer.
At 5,652, Maharashtra has the highest number of cases among Indian states. It is followed by Gujarat (2,407), Delhi (2,248), Rajasthan (1,935), Madhya Pradesh (1,592), Tamil Nadu (1,629), and Uttar Pradesh (1,449).