India set to scale up testing as cases go over 5,000

THE pandemic has now infected more than 1.4 million people worldwide, with over 82,000 deaths recorded.

India: The number of confirmed cases has crossed the 5,000 mark, with 149 deaths.

Although the cases are spread over roughly 40 per cent of the country’s districts, they are concentrated in its densely populated urban centres. Mumbai is the worst impacted.

India’s strategy is focused around identifying “containment zones” where efforts would be targeted on restricting the virus “within a defined geographic area” to break the chain of transmission. But officials say the next week will be pivotal.

India has conducted only 121,271 tests, but is likely to scale up testing in the coming days.

India has put its entire 1.3 billion people, one-fifth of the world’s population, under lockdown to April 14.

Netherlands: The Dutch public health institute has reported 147 new deaths in the outbreak, bringing the country’s toll to 2,248.

The increase yesterday was smaller than a day earlier, when it rose by 234. The totals on Tuesday are the highest of each week of the crisis, with health authorities reporting cases from the weekend.

The number of people who tested positive rose by 969 to 20,549, although the number of infections is likely higher because not everyone with symptoms is tested.

Tokyo: Governor Yuriko Koike says the Japanese capital has a record 144 new confirmed cases, bringing the total to 1,339, one day after a state of emergency was declared in the region.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a month-long state of emergency in Tokyo and six other hard-hit prefectures to bolster the fight against the virus.

Mr Abe said he was expecting widespread compliance despite the lack of legal penalties for violating social distancing and other measures.

Japan has seen 92 deaths and 4,257 confirmed cases.

Spain: The country’s Health Ministry reported 757 more deaths of patients with coronavirus and 6,180 new confirmed infections.

Both figures were slightly higher than Tuesday’s, when the first increase in five days was explained by a backlog of test results and fatalities that had gone unreported over the weekend.

But doubts about the statistics are being heard louder as fresh data starts to emerge. Authorities have already acknowledged a scarcity of testing kits and a bottleneck in the number of tests laboratories can conduct on a daily basis are giving an underestimated contagion tally, which rose to 146,000 yesterday.

A nationwide survey of 30,000 households has been launched to figure out what is the more approximate extent of the epidemic beyond hospitals and nursing homes.

Health Minister Salvador Illa said his department can only account for those who die and were tested. There have been few instances of post-mortem testing.

To rein in the data divide, Spain’s Justice Ministry issued an order yesterday requiring more than 4,000 civil registries to provide new and revised data.

Belarus: The number of cases in one of the few European countries that has not gone into lockdown has surpassed 1,000.

The country’s health officials reported 205 new cases yesterday, which brought the total to 1,066, with 13 deaths.