(Photo courtesy: Newsweek)
(TibetanReview.net, Oct09’20) – Almost all states and Union Territories in India are testing more than 140 samples “per day per million population”, the timesofindia.com Oct 9 cited the country’s health ministry as saying, referring to the WHO-prescribed minimum and underlining that higher testing on a sustained basis had aided in bringing down the positivity rate.
Currently, six states and one UT have a less than 5% positivity rate, the report said. The WHO considers this to be the rate below which the pandemic could be brought under control.
Besides, 22 states and one UT are below national average, indicating the rate of infection spread is being contained in many parts. The national average of tests per day per million population stands at 865, the report added.
Sustained drops in the daily numbers of new coronavirus infections had resulted in the active cases in the country dropping below nine lakh now. In the middle of September, there were more than 10.17 lakh active cases, noted the indianexpress.com Oct 9.
However, the outlook is far from rosy. A report submitted by an expert committee set up by the Delhi government has warned that the city should prepare for a daily surge of 15,000 positive cases this winter if festive gatherings are not controlled while respiratory ailments get aggravated during winter months.
“It has been seen that Onam in Kerala and Ganesh Chaturthi in Maharashtra escalated the pandemic seriously. This must not be allowed to happen in Delhi. Our emerging gains in reduction in cases will be reversed because of these festivities and rush in markets and localities,” another timesofindia.com reported Oct 9 quoted the experts as saying.
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Meanwhile the latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 70,496 new cases and 964 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Oct 09 at 8AM, taking their totals to 6,906,151 cases and 106,490 deaths.
A total of 5,906,069, or 85.52 %, had recovered while the number of active cases was 893,592, or 12.94% of the total. The case fatality rate was 1.54%. These were mostly improvements over the previous day’s figures.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 70,496, was less than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 78,365, leading to a decrease in the number of active cases by 8,833. The country has registered a dip in active cases for the sixth consecutive day.
India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases and the third highest number of deaths.
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Four states, namely Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu have accumulated more than 640,000 cases each in that order.
Fourteen other states, namely Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, Kerala, Odisha, Telangana, Bihar, Assam, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Chattisgarh, and Punjab had reported more than 120,000 cases each so far in that order.
Three other states/ Union Territories, namely Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, and Uttarakhand had reported more than 53,000 cases each so far in that order.
Seven more states/Union Territories, namely Goa, Puducherry, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh, reported more than 11,000 cases each in that order.
Besides, there were seven other states/Union Territories with a total more than 2,000 cases each, namely Meghalaya, Nagaland, Ladakh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Sikkim, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Mizoram in that order.
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 39,430 (↑358); followed by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka with more than 10,000 deaths each, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh with more than 6,100 deaths each; Delhi, and West Bengal with more than 5,400 deaths each; Punjab and Gujarat with more than 3,500 deaths each; Madhya Pradesh with more than 2,500 deaths; Rajasthan, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Telangana, and Chattisgarh with more than 1,100 deaths each; Odisha, Bihar, Assam, Kerala, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand, with between 974 and 702 deaths each, and so on in that order.
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The total number of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India, Nepal and Bhutan had increased after two days to 535 (↑132), of whom 287 were active, 233 had recovered and 15 (↑1) had died, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as of Oct 09.
The CTA said Oct 9 that at least 180 cases had been reported in Tibetan community in India and Nepal during this week. They included 8 are from Delhi, 13 from Ladakh, 18 from Hunsur, 3 from Miao, 6 from Bylakuppe, 4 from Tezu, 1 from Dharamshala, 117 from Mundgod, and 10 from Nepal.
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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 36,561,936 and the deaths 1,062,624, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 3:53 PM on Oct 9, 2020.
