(TibetanReview.net, Jun16’20) – India needs to ramp up Covid-19 testing by roughly 10 times — at least one million samples daily — to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, timesofindia.com Jun 16 cited Rakesh Mishra, the director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), during a video conference with Telangana governor Tamilisai Sounderajan and others.
India’s current level of testing at 115,000 and 150,000, started only recently, are admitted to be still extremely low.
Testing is essential as demonstrated in Dharavi, the Mumbai mega slum, where the infection is being controlled with increased testing, Mishra was quoted as saying.
Although the number of reported fresh infections in India fell to a six-day low of a little over 10,000 cases, it reported its sharpest single-day rise in deaths from the pandemic on Jun 16 morning.
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Latest figures from India’s Ministry of Health show that the country had 10,667 new infections and 380 new deaths over the past 24 hours as of Jun 16 at 8AM (GMT+5:30), taking their totals to 343,091 cases, the world’s fourth highest, and 9,900 deaths, the world’s eighth highest.
With a total of 180,013 patients having recovered from the disease, the number of active cases is 153,178.
The eight worst hit states with more than 10,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a total of 110,744 cases after 2,786 fresh cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Tamil Nadu with 46,504 (↑1,843) cases, Delhi with 42,829 (↑1,647) cases, Gujarat with 24,055 (↑511) cases, Uttar Pradesh 13,615 (↑0), Rajasthan 12,981 (↑287), West Bengal 11,494 (↑407), and Madhya Pradesh 10,935 (↑133).
Below them were 14 states/Union Territories with more than 1,000 cases, namely Haryana 7,722 (↑514), Karnataka 7,213 (↑213), Bihar 6,650 (↑180), Andhra Pradesh 6,456 (↑293), Jammu & Kashmir 5,220 (↑179), Telangana 5,193 (↑219), Assam 4,158 (↑109), Odisha 4,055 (↑146), Punjab 3,267 (↑127), Kerala 2,543 (↑82), Uttarakhand 1,845 (↑26), Jharkhand 1,763 (↑18), Chattisgarh 1,756 (↑94), and Tripura 1,086 (↑10).
And then there were eight other states/ Union Territories with more than 100 cases, namely Goa 592 (↑28), Himachal Pradesh 556 (↑38), Ladakh 555 (↑6), Manipur 490 (↑32), Chandigarh 354 (↑2), Puducherry 202 (↑8), Nagaland 177 (↑9), and Mizoram 117 (↑5).
Four states/Union Territories with less than 100 cases included Arunachal Pradesh 91 (↑0), Sikkim 68 (↑0), Meghalaya 44 (↑0), and Andaman and Nicobar Islands 41 (↑3).
Lakshadweep and Dadra Nagar Haveli remain the only States /Union Territories without any Covid-19 case.
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 4,128 (↑178), followed by Gujarat 1,505 (↑28), Delhi 1,400 (↑73), West Bengal 485 (↑10), Tamil Nadu 479 (↑44), Madhya Pradesh 465 (↑6), Uttar Pradesh 399 (↑0), Rajasthan 301 (↑9), Telangana 187 (↑2), Haryana 100 (↑12), Karnataka 89 (↑3), Andhra Pradesh 88 (↑4), Punjab 71 (↑4), Jammu & Kashmir 62 (↑3), Bihar 40 ↑1), Uttarakhand 24 (↑0), Kerala 20 (↑1), Odisha 11↑0), Assam 8 (↑0), Jharkhand 8 (↑0), Chattisgarh 8 (↑0), Himachal Pradesh 8 (↑1), Chandigarh 6 (↑1), Ladakh 1 (↑0), Meghalaya 1 (↑0), and Tripura 1 (↑0).
Seven States/ Union Territory with Covid-19 cases have reported no deaths so far.
(Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)
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Himachal Pradesh reported its highest spike of 38 Covid-19 cases in one day, taking its total to 556.
Kangra district has the highest total number of cases at 145 as of Jun 16 morning, followed by Hamirpur with 134, Una with 73, Solan with 39, Bilaspur with 29 and so on.
Although about 90,000 people had returned to Kangra from other parts of the country, the positive aspect has been that hardly any infected person, but for a Tibetan who died, required hospitalization, reported tribuneindia.com Jun 15. Out of 138 infection cases (till Jun 15 morning), 74 had recovered and there were 63 active cases now in the district, the report said.
The report cited Deputy Commissioner Kangra, Rakesh Prajapati, as saying the encouraging aspect was that most of the infected persons did not develop any symptoms such as cough or fever and recovered without any medication. They were just given high-protein diet, vitamin C tablets at Covid Containment Centres, he has said.
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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases surged past the 8 million mark to reach 8,052,090 while a total of 437,283 had died as of Jun 16 at 4:03:14 PM (GMT-4), according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
There were 126,853 new cases and 3,500 new deaths during the preceding 25 hours across 188 countries and regions.
The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were US (2,114,026), Brazil (888,271), Russia (544,725), India (343,091) … China (84,378).
The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were US (116,127), Brazil (43,959), UK (41,821), Italy (34,371), France (29,439), Spain (27,136), Mexico (17,580), India (9,900) … China (4,638).
(Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)
