Joint Secretary under Union Health Ministry Luv Aggarwal said that the country has reported 1,409 new cases in the last 24 hours. (File image)

Commenting on the progression of Covid-19 pandemic in the country, the Director-General of Indian Council of Medical Research Dr Balram Bhargava has said that the situation is stable and the country has been able to ‘flatten the curve.’ However, on the question of the possible date of its peak of prevalence in the country, Dr Bhargava refused to predict any date and said that it’s difficult to predict that it will come by May 3 or after that. Speaking during the Union Health Ministry and Family Welfare’s daily media briefing on Thursday, he highlighted that the recovery rate from Covid -19 stands at 4.5 per cent.

In another positive news, Delhi AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria said that the use of convalescent plasma has already started at various health centres to treat Coronavirus patients. He said that a large number of people who have recovered from the Covid-19 infection have come forward to donate their plasma. Convalescent plasma is the plasma extracted from the blood of people who have recovered from Covid-19 infection.

Throwing further light on the government’s approach and preparedness against the Coronavirus outbreak in the country, Environment Secretary who also chairs the government’s Empowered Group-2 in the battle against Coronavirus CK Mishra said that the country has been able to earn time in order to prepare better for the challenges lying ahead by the ongoing lockdown. “In last 30 days of lockdown, we have been able to cut transmission, minimise spread, consistently ramp up our testing & utilize this time to prepare ourselves for future”, CK Mishra said.

He added that India has ramped its testing capacity by 33 times in 30 days. “On March 23 we’ve done 14,915 tests across the country and on April 22 we have done more than 5 lakh tests. If a rough calculation is done it is about 33 times in 30 days.”. However, he refused to call the testing capacity enough and called for the need to upscale testing capacity.

Joint Secretary under Union Health Ministry Luv Aggarwal said that the country has reported 1,409 new cases in the last 24 hours. The addition takes the total tally of Coronavuirus infected patients in the country to 21,393. He also added that as many as 12 districts have not reported a single Covid -19 positive case over the last 28 days or more. Also, 78 districts in 23 states and union territories have not reported any new case in the last 14 Days.