New Delhi: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Wednesday (April 29) said that the government is planning to increase the testing capacity for coronavirus COVID-19 to one lakh tests per day within the next few days. Notably, the ICMR has till today conducted 7,70,764 sample tests across the country.
Since the development of vaccine will take a longer time, lockdown and social distancing are serving as effective 'social vaccine', Vardhan said.
In the next few days, one lakh people will be tested for coronavirus on a daily basis, Vardhan said, adding "Now, about 60,000 samples are being tested every day in 385 government and private labs."
He said that the doubling rate of COVID-19 patients in the country has become 11.3 days in the last three days, giving details about the deadly virus.
-The global mortality rate is 7% while India has 3%.
-Currently, 0.33% of the patients are on ventilators.
-1.5% of patients are on oxygen support.
-2.34% of patients are in the ICU.
He, however, assured that the country has the availability of isolation beds, ventilators, PPE, masks to deal with any situation.
A day earlier, the Health Ministry has sent a letter to all the state governments asking them to fully gear up to deal with an emergency situation.
According to Health Ministry data, the number of coronavirus cases in the country climbed to 31,787 on Wednesday, while the number of fatalities rose to 1,008, registering a record jump of 71 deaths in 24 hours.
There has been a spike of 1,813 cases since Tuesday evening. The total COVID-19 cases reported so far include 111 foreign nationals. The number of active COVID-19 cases stands at 22,982, while 7,796 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 hotspot districts in India has come down to 129 from 170 a fortnight ago. In the same period, the number of infection-free districts or green zones has also decreased from 325 to 307, sources said today.
On April 15, the Centre had declared 170 districts across 25 states and Union Territories as coronavirus hotspots or red zones. Of these, 123 were hotspot districts with large outbreaks and 47 with clusters, stating that 325 districts had not reported any coronavirus case because of actions initiated at field level.
