The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare claimed on Tuesday that a total of 602 hospitals dedicated to Wuhan coronavirus treatment with 1,06,710 isolation beds and 12,024 Intensive Care Units have been set up across the country.
Union Health Secretary, Luv Agarwal said, “The health ministry is continuously and rigorously working with States and Union Territories (UTs) to strengthen the health infrastructure in the country.”
Sharpest rise in cases
The health secretary said that the last 24 hours has seen the sharpest increase in novel coronavirus cases with 1,463 new cases and 29 casualties. As per the ministry, the total number of cases in India has risen to 10,815 including 9,272 active cases while 1190 have been recovered and discharged. 353 have succumbed to the contagious disease so far.
Luv Agarwal said, “If no new case is reported in an area for 28 days, the last case comes negative, then we believe that chain of transmission has broken there and no new cases are coming.”
Our major effort is to see how to break the chain of transmission. If no new case is reported in an area for 28 days, the last case comes negative, then we believe that chain of transmission has broken there and no new cases are coming: Joint Secretary, Union Health Ministry pic.twitter.com/fQxnKFlVpB
— ANI (@ANI) April 14, 2020
He added that the government is promoting the concept of behavioural change in terms of social distancing to break the chain of transmission. He said that an evaluation of each district and city will be done till April 20 in which it will be evaluated about what measures did those authorities took in respective cities and districts to combat the coronavirus.
Increase in testing capacity
Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research Head R Gangakhedkar said that the medical body is ordering close to 33 lacs of RT-PCR kits( Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain reaction) and 37 lacs rapid kits are expected to arrive anytime.
Additionally, we are ordering close to about 33 Lakh kits for RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction) & 37 Lakh rapid kits are expected to come at any point in time: R Gangakhedkar, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) https://t.co/qsnV4T5GAH
— ANI (@ANI) April 14, 2020
He asserted that we have received an instalment for RT-PCR kits which are far more efficient in numbers that can protect the health workers for longer.
As of yesterday, over 2 lakh samples have been tested in the country, informed ICMR.
