india

Updated: Apr 27, 2020 17:39 IST

In encouraging news amid the coronavirus health crisis, sixteen Indian districts which earlier had Covid-19 positive cases have not reported any fresh cases of the highly infectious disease for the last 28 days. The three new districts which are latest additions to this list are — Gondia in Maharashtra, Devangere in Karnataka and Lakhi Sarai in Bihar, data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare indicated on Monday.

A total of 85 districts in 25 states and Union Territories have not reported any Covid-19 fresh case in the last 14 days.

“The stigma related to Covid-19 patients should be addressed through an intensive campaign. We have to understand that there is no risk of transmission from recovered patients. They, in fact, can be a potential source of healing for antibodies using plasma therapy,” Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry told the media in the daily news briefing.

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The health ministry official reiterated that no community or area should be blamed for the spread of the coronavirus disease and healthcare and sanitation workers should not be attacked as they are helping in bringing the coronavirus crisis under control.

On the testing capacity in the country, the health ministry official said, “At the level of ICMR, we have sufficient amount of kits as far as RT PCR test is concerned. Not only are sufficient amount of kits available but we have also parallelly ensured geographical adequacy so that kits can reach states which need them.”

Since Sunday morning, there has been an increase of 1,396 positive cases in 24 hours, taking the total number of Covid-19 cases to 27,892 in India. 6,184 patients have been cured or discharged while 872 people have died from the deadly contagion in the country. The official said that a total of 381 people have recovered in the past day and the recovery rate of the country now stands at 22.17 per cent.

At the briefing, Empowered Group-5 chairperson Parameswaran Iyer said cooked meals are being served to 1.5 crore people daily by the government, NGOs and industry as per data available on April 25. He also praised the Indian Railways and said it had done a tremendous job in distributing essential supplies and in keeping the supply chain intact. “If you look at the movement of rakes, you will see it has gone up from 67% on March 30 to 76% on April 25,” Iyer said.

Earlier on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with various chief Ministers via video-link on whether and how to exit the nationwide lockdown. Kerala was the only state not represented by its Chief Minister in the video-conference. Pinarayi Vijayan did not attend the meeting because he was not among chief ministers listed to speak at the meeting, his office said.