india

Updated: Apr 21, 2020 02:00 IST

The number of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases in India is doubling every 7.5 days (based on analysis till April 19), with that in 18 states doubling even slower, the health ministry said in a briefing on Monday.

In Delhi, the state with the second highest number of cases, the number of cases were doubling every 8.5 days and in Kerala, new cases had slowed to such an extent that the number will double in 72.2 days, the ministry added.

The ministry’s analysis and an accompanying statement were silent on Maharashtra, the state with the most cases in the country, and Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. According to HT’s dashboard, the number of cases in Maharashtra is doubling every 4.9 days, Gujarat, 3.18 days, and Madhya Pradesh, 4.22 days. In Rajasthan, the number of cases is doubling every 4.97 days.

At a national level, the 7.5 days is a significant achievement because the number of cases was doubling every 3.4 days before the nationwide lockdown was enforced on March 25, the ministry said.

“We are calculating case doubling rate in intervals and in last seven days we have found India’s doubling rate to be 7.5 days, and considering this as a national average we found till April 19 that about 18 states had a doubling rate of more than 7.5 days, highlighting the effect of effective implementation of containment measures in these states,” said Lav Agarwal, joint secretary, health, Union health ministry.

The ministry also announced that Goa now has no active cases with all people who tested positive recovering.

Three districts, Mahe (Puducherry), Kodaggu (Karnataka) and Pauri Garhwal (Uttrakhand) have also not reported any fresh cases during the past 28 days, Agarwal said. That takes the number of districts which have not reported new cases in the past 28 days to three.

“There are now 59 districts from 23 States and UTs that have not reported any fresh cases during the last 14 days. The six new districts that have been included in this list are Dungarpur and Pali in Rajasthan, Jamnagar and Morbi in Gujarat, North Goa in Goa and Gomati in Tripura,” he added.

Meanwhile, the home ministry said in the briefing that cities and districts that are high on the priority list to review containment measures include Jaipur in Rajasthan, Indore in Madhya Pradesh, Mumbai and Pune in Maharashtra, and Kolkata, Howrah, 24 Parganas North, East Midnapur, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Kalimpong in West Bengal.

“These are areas where the situation is either worse or is likely to get worse in coming days, so a need was felt to send special teams to aid the local administration,” said Punya Salila Srivastava, joint secretary, ministry of home affairs.

Six interministerial teams have been sent to assist the state government in all these high disease burden states in managing the situation. “These teams not only have senior people from the field of public health but also experts from disaster management, and administrative officials. These experts will look into varied areas, from medical infrastructure, lockdown measures, migrant worker shelter, essential supplies etc,” said Srivastava.

A total of 17,265 confirmed cases have been reported for Covid-19 in the country so far, the health ministry said.A total of 543 people have died of the viral disease, it added.