india

Updated: Apr 25, 2020 13:30 IST

Eighty-six days after India first reported a positive case, the number of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases is likely to cross the 25,000 mark in the country on Saturday. About 800 people have succumbed to the viral infection so far.

However, the government says that with linear growth in the number of cases, India has, to quite an extent, managed to flatten the curve, with respect to other countries where cases have been reported exponentially and many more people died during the past three months.

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“It is hard to say whether peak will arrive in May or later, but if you look at the graph it is quite linear. The case positivity rate has been about 4.5% throughout, so we can safely say that we have managed to flatten the curve,” says Dr Balram Bhargava, director general, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and secretary, department of health research.

The Union health minister, Harsh Vardhan, on Friday also said that India has been saved from getting into the stage three of transmission, which is community transmission stage where getting to the source of infection is near impossible.

He also said that India has improved testing capacity over the past one month, with at least half a million tests already done so far, but the case positivity rate remaining around 4% bears witness to the fact that India is doing enough testing and the numbers are not alarmingly high.

India has been constantly ramping up testing; on March 23, 14914 tests were done, and by April 22 at least half a million tests were done, which is about an increase of 33% in 30 days.

There are about 325 laboratories in India, both government and private, currently testing for Covid-19, with a testing capacity of around 50,000 tests per day.

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“This is the capacity if we work in a single shift, but it can be scaled up to do almost double the number of tests. We have enough testing kits to perform tests for at least 8 weeks and ICMR is in the process of procuring more. There is absolutely no shortage of kits or any other material in the country that would hamper the testing. Everyone who needs testing is being tested,” says Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar, head, epidemiology and communicable disease division, ICMR.

To date, 5,062 Covid-19 cases have recovered taking the recovery percentage to over 20%. There are 17610 patients currently undergoing treatment at various hospitals across the country. Close to 9.45 lakh people are under community surveillance either in home quarantine or housed in various quarantine facilities, shows government data.

“The government is keeping a close watch and it is not like our intensive care units (ICUs) are overflowing, or there has been an increase in the sale of medicines for cough, cold or fever that would have been an indication that the disease is not under control; it is limited,” says Dr VK Paul, member (health), Niti Aayog.

Paul is also chairman of the empowered committee 1 that takes care of availability of doctors and medical staff to manage Covid-19 in the country.

Experts also say that lockdown measures, even though an extreme step, were implemented at the right time, and have helped in keeping the numbers in check.

“It is not possible to stop an infectious disease but what lockdown has done is delay the spread, and successfully so,” says Dr Jugal Kishore, community medicine specialist, Safadrjung Hospital, Delhi.