Cases double to 10,000 in six days
Cases in Delhi rise to 1,510 — a jump of 356; 1,253 new infections in country on Monday
NEWDELHI: India went past a bleak milestone on Monday as the number of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases crossed 10,000, with the infections doubling over six days and the government expanding containment efforts and ramping up testing in an attempt to curb the highly contagious pathogen from sweeping across the country.
On Monday, 1,253 fresh Covid-19 cases were reported in the country. Delhi recorded its biggest daily spike with 356 cases. The national capital has recorded 1,510 cases so far, becoming the city with the most number of infections.Four people died of Covid-19 on Monday, taking the Capital’s death toll to 28.
Until March 24, there were 536 Covid-19 cases in India. The number rose to 2,520 by April 2; 5,305 by April 7; and the latest tally stood at 10,444, according to HT’s dashboard. Of these, 355 people have died of the disease that rages uncontrolled across several nations and has left at least 117,000 dead across the world.
The tally of Covid-19 cases first jumped in India after the detection of hundreds of patients who attended gatherings of the Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim missionary group, in New Delhi’s Nizamuddin last month. Once the cluster – the largest single source so far in the country – was identified and isolated on March 30, daily cases have surged.
The number of cases in Delhi increased from 72 on March 29 to 1,510 so far -- most of the 356 cases reported on Monday appeared to be linked to the Nizamuddin gathering. The Capital reported its first case on March 2, when a 45-year-old who travelled from Italy tested positive. According to officials in the Delhi government, about 1,050 of the total cases are attendees of the Nizamuddin event or their contacts.
With the mass identification and isolation of such cases across the country, however, the focus has now shifted to how well the government can contain and localise the infections.
“The home secretary and the ministry of health communicate regularly through video conferencing with states and we tell them our containment strategies and they are working in coordination,” Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the Union health ministry, said at a news briefing on Monday.
Experts say that the impact of India’s 21-day national lockdown -- imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from March 25 -which appears to have relatively slowed the spread, could be undermined if disease clusters are not contained effectively, and people are not tested widely and aggressively. The next few weeks will likely determine the country’s trajectory in managing the outbreak and in preventing the
health care infrastructure from being overrun by infections.
Modi will address the nation on Tuesday morning at 10am, and is likely to announce an extension of the nationwide lockdown, possibly with some exemptions to get the wheels of the economy turning again.
The number of cases in Maharashtra surpassed 2,000 as it remained the state with the most Covid-19 patients across the country.
Three-hundred-and- fifty-two tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday, taking the state tally to 2,334, according to the state’s health bulletin. Among the new cases, 59 were reported from Mumbai.
Tamil Nadu, meanwhile, is the third state other than Maharashtra and Delhi to report more than 1,000 cases. The government in the state also announced the extension of the lockdown till April 30.
The Union health ministry said that 25 districts across 15 states that reported cases earlier had not detected fresh infections over the last two weeks, an optimistic statistic that stood in contrast to some states that have alarmingly turned into big Covid-19 hot spots.
While the government has created more than 1,200 containment zones across the country, much more needs to be done on the testing front to guard against the disease spreading undetected, they say.