India sees sharpest rise in COVID-19 cases with 1,463 reported in last 24 hrs
India on Tuesday reported 29 deaths and 1,463 new cases in last 24 hours, the sharpest ever increase in cases, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare informed. India's total number of coronavirus positive cases rose to 10,815 (including 9272 active cases, 1190 cured/discharged/migrated and 353 deaths).
The Health Ministry said:
- 1,036 Covid-19 patients cured so far
- 179 Covid-19 patients cured in last 24 hours
- Total 10,363 confirmed Covid-19 cases in India so far
- 1,211 Covid-19 cases reported in last 24 hours
- 31 Covid-19 deaths reported in last 24 hours
The figures continued to rise even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation today announced an extension of the lockdown till May 3.
The Ministry said that the major effort is to see how to break the "chain of transmission". Addressing the media, Luv Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Union Health Ministry said, "If no new case is reported in an area for 28 days, the last case comes negative, then we believe that chain of transmission has broken there and no new cases are coming...Under this, we are promoting the concept of behavioral change in terms of Social Distancing to break the chain of transmission."
India will, reportedly, start pool testing of coronavirus samples after the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) approved guidelines surrounding it. In pool testing, five samples will be tested in one go. The announcement came as India today crossed the 10,000-mark as Covid-19 cases.