(TibetanReview.net, Jun17’20) – India’s ministry of health and family welfare said Jun 16 that the recovery rate of patients suffering from Covid-19 had improved to 52.47 per cent while the testing capacity had reached 300,000 samples per day, reported timesofindia.com Jun 16. However, the country continues to report around 11,000 infections each day, numbering among the world’s highest.
The number of tests being carried out in India is still considered too low to make a real difference to checking the spread of the pandemic. The country has so far tested 5,921,069 Covid-19 suspects for a nation with a population of over 1.3 billion. It is said to be needed to test at least one million people each day to make real progress in checking the spread of the pandemic.
Higher testing will be needed to check not just hotspots but can become a more regular exercise to check the spread of the disease, timesofindia.com Jun 17 cited Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) director General Balram Bhargava as having written to the health ministry.
“The testing capacity for detecting the coronavirus in infected persons in the country is continuously being ramped up. The country now has the capacity to test 3 lakh samples per day,” the ministry was quoted as saying.
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Latest figures from India’s Ministry of Health show that the country had 10,974 new infections and 2003 new deaths over the past 24 hours as of Jun 17 at 8AM (GMT+5:30), taking their totals to 354,065 cases, the world’s fourth highest, and 11,903 deaths, the world’s eighth highest. However, the number of deaths, though highest thus far, included a large number of previously unreported cases after data comparisons.
With a total of 186,935 patients having recovered from the disease, the number of active cases is 153,227.
The eight worst hit states with more than 10,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a total of 113,445 cases after 2,701 fresh cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Tamil Nadu with 48,019 (↑1,515) cases, Delhi with 44,688 (↑1,859) cases, Gujarat with 24,577 (↑522) cases, Uttar Pradesh 14,019 (↑476), Rajasthan 13,216 (↑235), West Bengal 11,909 (↑415), and Madhya Pradesh 11,083 (↑148).
Below them were 14 states/Union Territories with more than 1,000 cases, namely Haryana 8,272 (↑550), Karnataka 7,530 (↑317), Andhra Pradesh 6,840 (↑385), Bihar 6,778 (↑128), Telangana 5,406 (↑213), Jammu & Kashmir 5,298 (↑78), Assam 4,319 (↑161), Odisha 4,163 (↑108), Punjab 3,371 (↑104), Kerala 2,622 (↑79), Uttarakhand 1,9425 (↑97), Jharkhand 1,839 (↑76), Chattisgarh 1,781 (↑25), and Tripura 1,092 (↑6).
And then there were eight other states/ Union Territories with more than 100 cases, namely Ladakh 649 (↑94), Goa 629 (↑37), Himachal Pradesh 560 (↑4), Manipur 500 (↑10), Chandigarh 358 (↑4), Puducherry 216 (↑14), Nagaland 179 (↑2), and Mizoram 121 (↑4).
Four states/Union Territories with less than 100 cases included Arunachal Pradesh 95 (↑4), Sikkim 70 (↑2), Andaman and Nicobar Islands 44 (↑3), and Meghalaya 44 (↑0).
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 5,537 (↑1,409), followed by Gujarat 1,505 (↑28), Delhi 1,837 (↑437), West Bengal 495 (↑10), Tamil Nadu 528 (↑49), Madhya Pradesh 476 (↑11), Uttar Pradesh 417 (↑18), Rajasthan 308 (↑7), Telangana 191 (↑4), Haryana 118 (↑18), Karnataka 94 (↑5), Andhra Pradesh 88 (↑0), Punjab 72 (↑1), Jammu & Kashmir 63 (↑1), Bihar 41 ↑1), Uttarakhand 25 (↑1), Kerala 20 (↑0), Odisha 11↑0), Assam 8 (↑0), Jharkhand 9 (↑1), Chattisgarh 9 (↑1), Himachal Pradesh 8 (↑0), Chandigarh 6 (↑0), 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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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases surged close to the 8.2 million mark to reach 8,184,331 while a total of 443,960 had died as of Jun 17 at 2:03:19 PM, according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
There were 132,241 new cases and 6,677 new deaths during the preceding 23 hours across 188 countries and regions.
The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were US (2,137,731), Brazil (923,189), Russia (552,549), India (354,065) … China (84,423).
The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were US (116,963), Brazil (45,241), UK (42,054), Italy (34,405), France (29,550), Spain (27,136), Mexico (18,310), India (11,903) … China (4,638).
(Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)