As the number of Covid-19 cases in India increased to 1,329 in last 24 hours, the total count of cases in the country surged to 18,985 on Tuesday, according to the latest data from Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Along with that, the country has recorded 603 deaths since the outbreak after 44 deaths were reported since Monday.
So far, India has 15,112 active cases. There are also 77 foreign nationals who are affected by the virus, the ministry said. Apart from that, there are at least 3,259 patients who have been discharged or cured from the highly contagious disease and one has migrated from the country.
Lav Aggrawal from Health Ministry said that at least 3,252 people recovered from the infection on Tuesday morning, showing that the recovery rate has gone up to over 17.47%, an improvement over 14.75% on Monday. Aggrawal also added, "61 additional districts from 23 States/UT have not reported any fresh cases in last 14 days. Four new districts have been included in the list - Latur, Osmanabad, Hingoli & Washim in Maharashtra."
Head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar said that 4,49,810 tests for COVID-19 have been conducted so far in India. Out of these, 35,852 samples were tested on Monday. The ICMR also advised all states not to use new rapid antibody test for Covid-19 for two days and said that it will investigate issue of faulty kits.
Meanwhile, crossing the 4,600-mark in registering coronavirus cases, Maharashtra remained the worst hit state. The total number of cases in the state surged to 4,669 with 232 deaths. The highest number of cases were reported from Mumbai with more than 3,000 positive Covid-19 patients.
Maharashtra was followed by Delhi, which has crossed 2,000-mark with 2,081 cases and 47 deaths, according to the latest data. Gujarat is the latest in the list after Delhi to cross 2,000-mark as well. The other states that crossed the 1,500-mark in the number of coronavirus cases in descending order are Rajashtan, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
Apart from Maharashtra and Delhi, the other most-affected states according to the deaths recorded are Madhya Pradesh (76), Gujarat (77), Telangana (23), Andhra Pradesh (22), Uttar Pradesh (20), Punjab (16), Karnataka (17), Tamil Nadu (17), Rajasthan (25), West Bengal (12), Jammu and Kashmir (5), Kerala (3), Jharkhand (2), Haryana (3) and Bihar (2). Meghalaya, Odisha, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and have reported one death each.
However, as a good news, all coronavirus positive cases in Goa and Manipur are now negative, informed respective state officials. Moreover, the health ministry added that Covid-19 growth has declined in Odisha and Kerala.
Meanwhile, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Dr Harsh Vardhan has launched 'Covid India Seva', an interactive platform for citizen engagement on Covid-19 on Tuesday. It is aimed at enabling e-governance delivery in real-time and answering people's queries. The 'Covid India Seva' will work as a dashboard at the backend that will help to process large volumes of tweets, converts them into resolvable tickets, and assigns them to the relevant authority for real-time resolution. "Trained experts will share authoritative public health information swiftly at scale, helping to build a direct channel for communication with citizens," the union minister said.
Of 71 who lost lives in Gujarat, 58% had diabetes
Analysis of the 71 deaths in Gujarat reveal that 37% of them were diabetics. Moreover, 39% of the patients had high blood pressure or hypertension. In all, six out of every 10 deceased had either diabetes or hypertension or both. Gujarat on Monday recorded 196 cases, a big dip from record high of 367 on Sunday. Ahmedabad, however, continued to be the biggest contributor with 147 or 75% of new cases. Silver lining for the state on Monday was discharge of 26 patients in a day. Twenty of them were from Ahmedabad. Jayanti Ravi, principal secretary (health & family welfare), said analysis of deaths reveals that out of 67 deaths till Monday, only seven were such where the patient had no co-morbidities or were not in vulnerable age group.
