India’s tally tops 3L, worst daily spike recorded
NEW DELHI: Ten days after recording two lakh COVID-19 cases, India surpassed the three lakh-mark on Saturday with the worst daily spike of 11,458 infections, while the death toll too climbed to 8,884 with 386 new fatalities, the Union Health ministry said.
Gujarat reported 517 new COVID19 cases and 33 deaths on Saturday, taking the case count to 23,079 and fatalities to 1,449.
India took 64 days to cross the 1 lakh-mark from 100 cases, then in another fortnight, it reached the grim milestone of two lakh cases. It has now become the fourth worst-hit nation by the pandemic with a caseload of 3,08,993.
However, the Union Health ministry said on Friday the doubling time of Coronavirus cases has improved to 17.4 days from 15.4 days. And its data updated at 8 am on Saturday showed active cases at 1,45,779 and those who have recovered at 1,54,329.
“Thus, around 49.9 per cent patients have recovered so far,” a ministry official said.
The total number of confirmed cases include foreigners.
Of the 386 new deaths, Delhi accounted for the highest 129 fatalities followed by Maharashtra 127. The virus is moving rapidly in Delhi, which for the first time reported over 2,000 cases on Friday, and Maharashtra, where the number of cases has crossed one lakh.
Gujarat reported 33 deaths, Uttar Pradesh 20, Tamil Nadu 18, West Bengal, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh 9 each, Karnataka and Rajasthan 7 each, Haryana and Uttarakhand 6 each, Punjab 4, Assam 2, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir and Odisha 1 each.
Of the total 8,884 deaths, Maharashtra tops the tally with 3,717 fatalities followed by Gujarat with 1,449.
Maharashtra has reported the maximum number of cases at 1,01,141 followed by Tamil Nadu (40,698), Delhi (36,824) and Gujarat (23,079) among others.
The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 10,244 in West Bengal, 6,516 in Karnataka, 6,334 in Haryana and 6,103 in Bihar.
Meanwhile, the Union Health ministry has recommended the use of antiviral drug remdesivir under emergency use authorisation, off-label application of immunomodulator tocilizumab and convalescent plasma therapy for treating COVID-19 patients in the moderate stage of criticality.
Backtracking from its earlier stance, the ministry in its revised ‘Clinical Management Protocols for COVID-19’, released on Saturday, said anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) should be used in the early course of the disease to achieve any meaningful effect and should be avoided in severe cases.
In the new set of protocols, the ministry has removed its earlier recommendation of using hydroxychloroquine in combination with azithromycin in severe cases and requiring ICU management.
“Nonetheless, several large observational studies with severe methodologic limitations have shown no effect on mortality or other clinically meaningful outcomes.
“As such, the evidence base behind its use remains limited as with other drugs and should only be used after shared decision making with the patients while awaiting the results of ongoing studies,” the revised document stated.