Covid-19 infections cross 9,000 but no new cases in 25 districts for 14 days

india

Updated: Apr 13, 2020 18:02 IST

Even as the number of Covid-19 cases continues to rise in India, the government on Monday pointed out that no news cases have been reported from 25 districts in 15 states where people have been affected by coronavirus.

“No new cases have been detected in the last 14 days in 25 districts across 15 states which had earlier reported coronavirus cases,” Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry said at the daily briefing.

The total number of infections in the country rose 9152 by Monday afternoon.

“There have been 796 COVID-19 cases, 35 deaths reported in the last 24 hours,” Agarwal said.

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Maharashtar continues to be the worst affected with 1,985 positive cases, followed by Delhi at 1,154 and Tamil Nadu with 1,043.

He said the Core Strategy Group on Coovid-19 is working on molecular surveillance, rapid and economical diagnostics and new drugs.

The government also said that there are enough testing kits as the pace of testing is being raised.

“Till yesterday we conducted 2,06,212 Covid-19 tests. There is no need to worry. We have enough stock to conduct tests for six weeks,” said Raman Gangakhedkar, ICMR’s top scientist.

Gangakhedkar also said the first consignment of Covid-19 testing kits from China will arrive on Tuesday.

India has recently stepped up testing with the government authorising dozens of private labs to carry out tests. But even as the number of testing facilities has increased, there are also fears of false testing posing a danger to the fight against Covid-19.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) had earlier said that more testing was the only way to know the actual scale of the pandemic.