Infection rate only 2%, no community transmission yet: Ministry (Ld)

New Delhi, April 10 (IANS) The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Friday said that there is no community transmission in India yet and the rate of the infection of novel Coronavirus is low.

Speaking to media at a conference, Joint secretary of the Health Ministry, Lav Agarwal said: “at least 16002 samples were tested on Thursday, of which only 320 people tested positive for COVID-19. Only 2% cases tested positive. Based on the samples collected, we can say that the infection rate is not high although it is dynamic.”

Agarwal, however, suggested that people need to be alert. “Today, the challenge is not local or community transmission but the challenge is whether we are following all the precautionary and containment measures? There is no community transmission in the country yet, but we need to remain aware and alert,” said Agarwal.

Agarwal also said that there was just one lab in the country and now there are total 213 laboratories in the country at present for testing COVID19 and the government is opening labs at the rate of 2.5 per day. “There are 146 government and 67 private labs. Earlier we did five to six thousand tests per day but yesterday 16002 tests were conducted. We are making 2.5 labs operational per day.

Manoj Murhekar. Director, National Institute of Epidemiology who was also present at the press conference told the media, “144910 samples were tested till yesterday 9 p.m. from 103792 suspected patients of which 5075 were positive. We conducted 16002 tests in a single day. It (number of tests per day) has increased substantially.

The Joint Health Secretary informed the media that there were a total of 6412 cases of COVID-19 reported so far. “At least 503 people were cured while 199 people died till date. A total of 678 new cases and 33 new deaths in a single day.”

–IANS

sfm/prs