NEW DELHI: The number of confirmed novel coronavirus patients in India has now reached 10, 363 with a whopping 1,211 fresh cases registered –the highest in a day-- in the last 24 hours, the Centre said on Tuesday.
About 10 per cent of these patients have also been cured while 339 people have lost lives due to the infection.
Asked about the rationale behind the government’s 40 day containmant plan, Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary in the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said that it was important to break the chain of transmission of the disease and if no coronavirus case is reported for 28 days from specific area, it can be said that the chain of transmission in that particular locality has been broken.
The official maintained that India had been ahead of the curve in facing the threat of coronavirus and had started screenings at airports in January.
Agarwal said that when it came to testing protocol to gauge the scale of coronavirus, it is important to test those who need to be tested.
Dr R R Gangakhedkar, chief epidemiologist with the Indian Council of Medical Research who also spoke at the briefing, brushed aside concerns about the number of testing kits required to check the spread of coronavirus.
“Yesterday we said that we have kits that could last for 6 weeks. We have received another installment for RT-PCR kits which are far more sufficient in numbers, which would essentially mean that we would be able to cover ourselves for a long period of time.”
He said 37 lakh rapid test kits are expected to reach any time.
“Additionally, we are ordering close to about 33 lakh kits for RT-PCR and 37 akh rapid kits are expected to come at any point in time,” said Gangakhedkar.
Meanwhile the ministry issued a detailed guidelines for states to let essential healthcare services such as maternal and child care, tuberculosis and HIV treatment, dialysis and maintenance of voluntary blood donation etc amid complaints that thousands of people were having problem in accessing these services in hospitals in several parts of the country.
It also allowed Uttar Pradesh to pool test samples from up to five suspected people in one go through RTPCR method. The move is aimed at reducing the number of kits used in testing individual samples.