(TibetanReview.net, Jun24’20) – The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has on Jun 23 revised its Covid-19 testing strategy to include “The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has on Jun 23 revised its Covid-19 testing strategy to include “all symptomatic individuals in every part of the country”. The existing strategy while advising testing for symptomatic individuals restricted it only to those in hospitals, containment zones and hotspots, contacts of confirmed cases, healthcare and frontline workers, and those with history of international travel.
The World Health Organization has long stated and reiterated that its key message for all countries is: test, test, test.
Countries that have tested more have seen sharp rises in cases and then effectively brought the pandemic under control.
India has registered over 14,000 cases for the fifth day in a row and witnessed a surge of 2,65,648 infections from Jun 1 till Jun 24, noted tribuneindia.com Jun 24.
The ICMR’s revised guideline came as India’s Ministry of Health reported the highest ever figure of 15,968 new cases in the past 24 hours as of Jun 24 at 8 AM, and 465 new deaths during that period, taking their totals to 456,183 cases and 14,476 deaths.
A total of 258,685, or 56.71 per cent, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 183,022.
India currently has the fourth highest number of Covid-19 cases after the US, Brazil and Russia. It also has the eighth highest number of deaths from the pandemic.
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The 10 worst-hit states with more than 10,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a total of 139,010 cases after 3,214 fresh cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Delhi with 66,602 (↑3,947) cases, Tamil Nadu with 64,603 (↑2,516) cases, Gujarat with 28,371 (↑546) cases, Uttar Pradesh 18,893 (↑571), Rajasthan 15,627 (↑395), West Bengal 14,728 (↑370), Madhya Pradesh with 12,261 (↑183) cases, Haryana with 11,520 (↑495) cases, and Andhra Pradesh 10,002 (↑630).
Below them were 12 states/Union Territories with more than 1,000 cases, namely Karnataka 9,721 (↑322), Telangana 9,553 (↑879), Bihar 8,153 (↑328), Jammu & Kashmir 6,236 (↑148), Assam 5,831 (↑245), Odisha 5,470 (↑167), Punjab 4,397 (↑162), Kerala 3,451 (↑141), Uttarakhand 2,535 (↑33), Chattisgarh 2,362 (↑59), Jharkhand 2,185 (↑48), and Tripura 1,259 (↑22).
And then there were nine other states/ Union Territories with more than 100 cases, namely Ladakh 932 (↑85), Manipur 921 (↑23), Goa 909 (↑45), Himachal Pradesh 775 (↑48), Chandigarh 418 (↑7), Puducherry 402 (↑19), Nagaland 330 (↑50), Arunachal Pradesh 148 (↑9), and Mizoram 142 (↑1).
Three states/Union Territories with less than 100 cases included Sikkim 79 (↑1), Andaman and Nicobar Islands 50 (↑2), and Meghalaya 46 (↑2).
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 6,531 (↑248), followed by Delhi 2,301 (↑68), Gujarat 1,710 (↑26), Tamil Nadu 833 (↑39), West Bengal 580 (↑11), Madhya Pradesh 525 (↑4), Uttar Pradesh 588 (↑19), Rajasthan 365 (↑9), Telangana 220 (↑3), Haryana 178 (↑9), Karnataka 150 (↑8), Andhra Pradesh 119 (↑8), Punjab 105 (↑4), Jammu & Kashmir 87 (↑2), Bihar 56 (↑1), Uttarakhand 30 (↑2), Kerala 22 (↑1), Odisha 17(↑2), Chattisgarh 12 (↑0), Jharkhand 11 (↑0), Assam 9 (↑0), Himachal Pradesh 8 (↑0), Puducherry 9 (↑1), Chandigarh 6 (↑0), Goa 1 (↑1), Ladakh 1 (↑0), Meghalaya 1 (↑0), and Tripura 1 (↑0).
Six States/ Union Territory with Covid-19 cases have reported no deaths so far.
(Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)
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Delhi now has a total of 66,602 cases and could potentially overtake Mumbai as early as today, reported the indianexpress.com Jun 24. Mumbai, which has 68,410 cases, is growing much slowly, and on Jun 23 added only 842 new cases against Delhi’s 3,947, the highest single-day increase in any state.
Delhi had almost doubled its tests in the last one week, the same period in which there has been a sharp increase in numbers, the report noted. It said the city had tested almost 17,000 samples on Jun 23, compared to 5,000 to 7,000 per day just a week back.
The Delhi government has issued instructions to the local authorities in the districts to increase the number of Covid-19 tests in the wake of a Delhi high court order that has called its daily count “abysmal”, noted the timesofindia.com Jun 24.
In fact, as a part of a new plan by the Delhi government, every house in the city will be screened by Jul 6, reported indiatoday.in Jun 24.
As part of the new ‘Delhi Covid Response Plan’ to overcome corona, all containment zones will be reviewed, redesigned by Jun 26 and the screening of every house in these zones will be done by Jun 30, the report said.
The screening of the rest of Delhi will be completed by Jul 6, the new Delhi Covid plan was cited as stating.
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Himachal Pradesh reported 48 new cases on Jun 23, including 17 in Kangra, taking the state’s tally to 775.
The state currently has 324 active cases, including 105 in Kangra.
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Regarding the number of Tibetan cases, the report of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) remains unchanged at a total of 33 cases in India, Nepal and Bhutan, of which 14 were active, 17 had recovered, and two had died.
The CTA has also reported a total of 213 cases among Tibetans living in other countries abroad, of which 40 were active, 165 had recovered and eight had died.
The CTA has also noted that there had been a total of 107 cases in Chinese occupied Tibet, of which 106 had recovered and one had died.
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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases has surged past the 9.27 million mark to reach 9,273,773 while a total of477,807 had died as of Jun 24 at 2:03:27 PM, according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
There were 157,895 new cases and 5,286 new deaths during the past 23 hours across 188 countries and regions.
The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were the US (2,347,102), Brazil (1,145,906), Russia (606,043), India (456,183) … China (84,653).
The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were US (121,225), Brazil (52,645), UK (43,011), Italy (34,675), France (29,723), Spain (28,325), Mexico (23,377), India (14,476) … China (4,640).
(Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)
