(TibetanReview.net, May05’20) – As the number of new Covid-19 cases in India hit a new high for the fifth successive day on May 4, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has said the country has been able to keep itself from slipping into community transmission when infections typically increase exponentially, reported indianexpress.com May 5.
However, Dr Randeep Guleria, Director, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), member of the core team of top officials reviewing and monitoring the pandemic in the country, has expressed concern that while the curve has been flattened thanks to the tight lockdown measures, it has “not shown a downward trend,” said another indianexpress.com report May 5.
“The solution is to identify the areas where the maximum number of cases are coming, and focus containment to bring down the number of cases, and convert them to orange or green zones. At the same time, continue surveillance in green zones. You have to make sure there is restricted movement or no movement from red zones to green zones. What the lockdown has done is prepare our health facilities. It gave us time because the number of cases did not rise sharply. Because of that… we are better prepared than we were before,” he was quoted as saying.
There were 3,900 new cases and 195 new deaths during the past 24 hours as of May 5 at 8AM (GMT+5:30), taking their totals to 46,433 infections and 1,568 deaths, according to the tally of India’s Ministry of Health. India is currently the country with the 15th highest cumulative number of Covid-19 cases.
Seventy per cent of the deaths were stated to be due to comorbidities. With 12,726 of the infected persons having recovered, 32,138 cases remain active.
Maharashtra, the worst-hit state by a huge margin, had a cumulative total of 14,541 (+1,567) cases, followed by Gujarat with 5,804 (+376) cases, Delhi with 4,898 (+349) cases, Tamil Nadu with 3,550 (+527) cases, Rajasthan with 3,061 (+175) cases, Madhya Pradesh with 2,942 (+96) cases, Uttar Pradesh with 2,766 (+121) cases, Andhra Pradesh with 1,650 (+67) cases, West Bengal with 1,259 (+296) cases, Punjab with 1,233 (+131) cases, Telangana with 1,085 (+3) cases, Jammu & Kashmir with 726 (+25) cases, Karnataka with 651 (+37) cases, Bihar with 528 (+25) cases, Haryana with 517 (+75) cases, Kerala with 500 (+0) cases, Odisha, 169 (+7), Jharkhand, 115 (+0), and Chandigarh, 102 (+8).
Other badly hit states/Union Territories were Uttarakhand, 60 (+0); Chattisgarh, 58 (+1), Assam, 43 (+0); Ladakh, 41 (+0); Himachal Pradesh, 41 (+1); Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 33 (+0); Tripura, 29 (13); and Meghalaya 12 (+0).
Besides, Puducherry (8), Goa (7), Manipur (2), Mizoram (1), and Arunachal Pradesh (1) had reported cases.
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 583 (+35), followed by Gujarat, 319 (+29); Madhya Pradesh, 165 (+8); Delhi, 64 (+0); Rajasthan, 77 (+6); Uttar Pradesh, 50 (+7); West Bengal,133 (+98); Andhra Pradesh, 36 (+3); Tamil Nadu 31 (+1); Telangana, 29 (+0); Karnataka, 27 (+2); Punjab, 23 (+2); Jammu & Kashmir, 8 (+0); Haryana, 6 (+1); Bihar 4 (+0); Kerala, 4 (+0); and Jharkhand, 3 (+0). Besides six states, namely Assam, Chandigarh, HP, Meghalaya, Odisha, and Uttarakhand had 1 death each. (Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)
The large increase in new cases on Mar 4 was partly because Maharashtra confirmed a large number of pending test results from previous days, note the indianexpress.com May 5.
This is true of other states as well as rapid test kits imported from China were found defective and were returned to the country, causing disruption to India’s mass test plans.
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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases had reached 3,598,324 and the deaths 251,832 as of May 5 at 3:02:30 PM (GMT-4), according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. There were 78,423 new cases and 4,302 new deaths during the preceding 24 hours across 187 countries and regions.
The countries with the most number of reported cases thus far were US (1,180,634), Spain (218,011) Italy (211,938), UK (191,832), France (169,583), Germany (166,152), Russia (155,370), Turkey (127,659), Brazil (108,620), Iran (98,647), and China (83,966).
The countries with the most number of deaths were US (68,934), Italy (29,079), UK (28,809) Spain (25,428), France (25,204), Belgium (8,016), Brazil (7,367), Germany (6,993), Iran (6,277), Netherlands (5,098) and China (4,637).
