At a Covid centre in New Delhi.Coronavirus India News Live Updates: With yet another surge of over 95,000 cases in 24 days, the Covid-19 tally in India went pass the 4.5 million mark while the number of fatalities stood at 76,271 on Friday, as per latest data released by the Ministry of Health Affairs. As many as 70,000 recoveries were also registered within the same time period.
On Thursday, the Centre reiterated that all symptomatic negative cases of rapid antigen tests (RAT) must mandatorily take an RT-PCR retest for Covid. It also directed all states to set up two teams each, at the level of the district and the state, to monitor and ensure that no potentially positive case is missed out.
Meanwhile, the India trials of the vaccine, being carried out by Pune-based Serum Institute of India, have been halted. Serum had, on Wednesday, claimed that the India trials would remain unaffected by AstraZeneca’s decision. However, it was issued a show-cause notice by the officer of the Drug Controller General of India, and on Thursday, Serum said it was putting a hold on India trials.
Globally, over 28 million have been affected while over 908,257 have succumbed to the virus so far. The United States continued to remain the worst-affected, followed by India and Brazil.
A hospital worker pauses next to an ambulance outside of Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn, May 11, 2020. (Dave Sanders for The New York Times)
With the ‘jumbo’ Covid care facility at CoEP yet to be fully functional and Sassoon General Hospital facing its own share of oxygen supply-related problems, large private hospitals in Pune are not only sharing the maximum burden of treating Covid-19 patients but also grappling with serious healthcare staff shortage, with an attrition rate of 8 to 9 per per cent, and rising. There are over 38,000 active Covid-19 cases in Pune district, and areas under Pune Municipal Corporation have been reporting over 2,000 Covid-19 cases daily, while neighbouring PCMC has reported over 1,200 cases daily. The city has also seen an influx of patients not just from rural areas of the district but also from other districts like Ahmednagar, Jalgaon, Satara, Sangli and even districts of Marathwada. Six months into the worldwide pandemic, a sense of fatigue has now set in as private hospital administrators admit to shortage of healthcare staff and the steady rise in number of non-Covid patients who require hospitalisation, but there just aren’t enough beds.
All public transport, offices and other commercial establishments, barring those dealing with essential services, remained closed as West Bengal observed its bi-weekly lockdown on Friday. The lockdown was also almost total in Kolkata and in districts barring some places like Purulia town, Asansol, Durgapur where some grocery shops and vegetable vendors did brisk business in the morning before police stepped in, PTI reported. All the markets, shops, commercial establishments were closed while pharmacies remaine opened. Police made some arrests in city and elsewhere for violations of lockdown norms.
Arunachal Pradesh's Covid-19 caseload rose to 5,672 as 127 more people including 14 security personnel have tested positive for the virus, a senior Health department official told PTI on Friday. Of the fresh cases, Capital complex region reported the highest number at 57, followed by Papumpare (18), East Siang (12), Lower Subansiri (11), Lower Dibang Valley (10), Upper Siang (5) and Lohit (4), the official said. Two cases each were also reported in Tirap, Longding and Upper Subansiri and one each in Lohit, East Kameng, Tirap and Upper Siang districts, State Surveillance Officer Dr L Jampa, said. "Fourteen security personnel including seven ITBP personnel and six state policemen and one army jawan are among the fresh cases," the official said, adding a that health care worker from Upper Subansiri was also infected with the virus.
Kolkata Police Commissioner Anuj Sharma tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday as the state recorded 3,112 new cases, pushing up the infection count to 1,93,175. Sharma has mild symptoms and has isolated himself at home. His diagnosis came a couple of days after he attended a “Police Day” programme at the state secretariat in which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and other senior officials were present. “He took the test yesterday [Wednesday] and it confirmed the infection today. He is in home isolation at the moment,” said a senior city police official.
The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Commission has asked a nursing home near Kolkata to deposit Rs 5 lakh while it investigates a complaint accusing the medical facility of diagnosing a Covid-19 patient within minutes of conducting a test. Questions have been raised about the veracity of the “test”. Click here to read more.
At least 0.73 per cent adults in India were exposed to SARS-CoV-2 amounting to a total of 6.4 million infections by early May, the first national serosurvey conducted by the ICMR, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research, indicated. Also, seropositivity was the highest in the age group of 18-45 years (43.3 per cent), followed by those between 46-60 years (39.5 per cent) and it was the lowest among those aged above 60 (17.2 per cent). "The findings of our survey indicated that the overall seroprevalence in India was low, with less than one per cent of the adult population exposed to SARS-CoV-2 by mid-May 2020. The low prevalence observed in most districts indicates that India is in early phase of the epidemic and the majority of the Indian population is still susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection," the report said.
The UP government on Thursday fixed the cost of treatment of Covid patients in private hospitals and also reduced the price of RT-PCR and TrueNat tests to Rs 1,600 from Rs 2,500 earlier. Additional Chief Secretary (Medical & Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said that charging more than the decided amount will be considered violation of Epidemic Disease Act. As per a letter issued by Prasad to all the DMs and the CMOs, the rate for isolation beds including supportive care and oxygen at NABH accredited hospitals in Tier-A cities will not be more than Rs 10,000 per day, while non-accredited hospitals can charge a maximum of Rs 8,000 per day. Similarly, for ICU without ventilator care, the NABH accredited hospitals can charge Rs 15,000 and non-accredited can charge Rs 13,000. At NABH hospitals, the maximum charge for ICU with ventilator care will Rs 18,000 per day and the same would be Rs 15,000 for non-accredited hospitals. All the charges would include the PPE cost, the government said.
Concerned over the surge in the number of Covid-19 cases, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa Thursday directed district administrations to work towards bringing down the death rate related to the pandemic. “District administrations should ensure special attention is paid to bring down the death rate while taking precautions of not getting infected,” he said, adding that the government was taking all measures to contain the pandemic.
Reiterating that all symptomatic negative cases of rapid antigen tests (RAT) must mandatorily take an RT-PCR retest for Covid, the Centre on Thursday directed all states to set up two teams each, at the level of the district and the state, to monitor and ensure that no potentially positive case is missed out. Symptomatic negative cases are those where the patient has symptoms of Covid, but tests negative. Since rapid antigen tests are known to have high degre of false negatives, the ICMR had mandated that symptomatic negative cases must get a retest through RT-PCR. Government sources, part of the team monitoring the pandemic, said the decision came after they found that a “few big states” are now reporting a significantly high percentage of symptomatic negatives not being retested through RT-PCR, thereby spreading the infection among the general population.
Once the bottom-ranked state in terms of testing, Jharkhand has significantly scaled up the rate of the procedure—from 8,837 tests per million in August 2 to 33,125 now. Now, the state is eighth from the bottom in tests per million—ahead of Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Chandigarh, Nagaland, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. As on September 9, the number of samples tested for Covid-19 stood at 12.69 lakh compared to 4.48 lakh people who were tested as on August 15 for Covid-19. The state has 55,926 positive cases with 15,431 active ones. As many 39,362 people have recovered and discharged while 503 have died.
With yet another surge of over 95,000 cases in 24 days, the Covid-19 tally in India went pass the 4.5 million mark while the number of fatalities stood at 76,271 on Friday. Follow our blog for all the latest updates.