india

Updated: Apr 26, 2020 09:14 IST

India reported 1,990 new cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), 561 more than Saturday, and 49 deaths in the past 24 hours, the Union health ministry said on Sunday morning.

The ministry’s Covid-19 dashboard showed 19,868 people have been infected by Sars-Cov-2 and 824 people have now died of the respiratory disease across the country. The number of patients who have been cured or discharged has also gone up to 5803 on Sunday morning from 5062 from a day earlier.

Maharashtra and Gujarat, where the coronavirus outbreak has been growing at a much faster pace recently than the rest of the country, had the most number of cases.

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With 7,628 infections and 323 deaths, Maharashtra continued to report the most number of cases in the country. In Gujarat, there were 3071 Covid-19 patients and 133 deaths.

Officials have said the national doubling rate of infections was 9.1 days. According to HT’s analysis of the numbers reported by the states, this was 4.3 and 6.7 days respectively for Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Officials said the overall growth in the number of cases in India has been linear, compared to some other countries where it has been exponential.

Dr Balram Bhargava, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and secretary of the department of health research, has said the case positivity rate has been about 4.5% throughout.

Positivity rate is the proportion of people who test positive among all individuals tested on a particular day.

“So we can safely say that we have managed to flatten the curve,” Dr Bhargava said.

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While officials and experts argue that this number suggests India been testing adequately, the total number of tests carried out across the country is still a mere 420 per million population.

ICMR data shows there were close to 40,000 tests carried out by the government as well as private labs across the country on Friday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet chief ministers of states over video conference, the third such on issues related to the coronavirus pandemic, on Monday to discuss a number of issues including a decision on the lockdown.