The Union Health Ministry on Thursday informed that India has been able to cut transmission, minimise spread, and increase doubling rate of the deadly COVID-19 VIRUS in the last 30 days lockdown period.

"We have been able to cut transmission, minimise spread, and increase doubling rate. We have utilized this time to prepare ourselves for the future. Growth has been more or less linear, not exponential," CK Mishra, Environment Secretary & Chairman of Empowered Group-2 said.

The Health Ministry further stated that there are now 12 districts that did not report any fresh coronavirus case in the last 28 days or more. 78 districts did not report fresh coronavirus cases for 14 days, It further informed.

However, Mishra said that testing for coronavirus needs to be significantly ramped up in the country, adding that the current testing rate is 'not enough'.

'On March 23 we've done 14,915 tests across the country&on April 22 we have done more than 5 lakh tests. If a rough calculation is done it is about 33 times in 30 days. This is not enough &we need to ramp testing in this country,' Mishra said.

He also informed that 4,257 COVID-19 patients have recovered so far, scaling the recovery rate to 19.89%.

In the last 24 hours, 1409 positive cases were reported with the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases reaching up to 21,393, the health ministry informed.

Moreover, the home ministry informed that the in-house caregivers of senior citizens, prepaid mobile recharge utilities, and food processing units in urban areas are exempted from lockdown restrictions.   

The total number of confirmed cases of coronavirus infection in India crossed the 20,000-mark on Wednesday while the death toll crossing 650 till Thursday morning.