With 490 new coronavirus patients, India now has 4067 cases; death toll at 109

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Updated: Apr 06, 2020 14:02 IST

The number of coronavirus disease cases in India rose to 4067, with an increase of 490 in the last 12 hours, and the deaths related to Covid-19 were recorded at 109 on Monday morning, the Union health ministry said.

There are 3666 active cases of Covid-19 and 291 people have been cured or discharged till date, according to the figures released by the Union health ministry at 9am. This is up from 3577 cases and 83 deaths, according to the health ministry data, on Sunday.’

The Covid-19 cases and deaths have been reported in 30, out of 36, states and Union territories till date.

Maharashtra, which is the worst-affected state in the country, reported 777 Covid-19 cases including 45 deaths. Tamil Nadu was second with 584 patients of the coronavirus disease followed by Delhi, which has reported 528 cases with seven fatalities.

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The numbers in Delhi have risen after hundreds of people, who took part in the Tablighi Jamaat’s religious congregation in Nizamuddin, tested positive for Covid-19.

Mumbai and other cities in Maharashtra like Pune and Nagpur have recorded a substantial rise in the number of Covid-19 patients in last few days—of these nearly 85% are in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Pune district, the most urbanised areas of the state.

The state government has decided to focus on these areas to contain the spread of the virus. The municipal corporations in these cities have been directed to implement the cluster containment action plan minutely to restrict the spread.

Municipal corporations in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai have formed 519 and 196 teams of the health works respectively to work in the containment zones and monitoring people who are in high-risk areas. Pune has 439 teams and Nagpur city has 210.

“We have 3078 teams comprising more than four members in each team across the state. They have traced more than 10 lakh people who need to be monitored to avoid the spread,” said state health minister Rajesh Tope.

The Centre said on Saturday that the doubling rate of the pathogen’s spread was at 4.1 days and it said would have stood at 7.4 if not for the Nizamuddin hotspot.

The jump in the number of coronavirus infections, officials said, has been driven by the detection of hundreds of people who attended the congregation of the Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim missionary group, in Delhi’s Nizamuddin Markaz last month.

Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Karnataka, Andaman and Nicobar, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh and Jharkhand have reported cases linked to the Tablighi Jamaat event in March.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India’s top biomedical research organisation has said that Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is not airborne.

“If it was an airborne infection, then in a family whoever has a contact they all should come positive because they are living in the same surrounding as the patient and the family is breathing the same air,” Raman R Gangakhedkar, ICMR’s head of epidemiology and communicable diseases, said on Saturday.

“When someone is admitted in a hospital, other patients would have been exposed (if it was airborne) but that is not the case,” he said.

ICMR also issued an advisory saying spitting in public places could enhance the spread of Covid-19.

It has released an advisory on how and where to use the rapid test, which can determine the immunity of an individual and help people get back into the workforce.

The advisory includes people in high-risk areas or containment zones, large migration gatherings and evacuation centres.

Millions of people across India turned off their lights and lit up their balconies and doorsteps with lamps, candles and flashlights on Sunday, in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to “challenge the darkness” spread by the coronavirus crisis.

The Prime Minister, who imposed a three-week-long nationwide lockdown on March 25, asked all citizens to turn out their lights for nine minutes at 9pm and to display lamps and candles in a show of solidarity.

Officials in multiple states have said curbs on movement and commercial activity could be relaxed first in districts with no coronavirus disease cases as part of their plan to a staggered return to normal activity could work after April 14, when the nationwide lockdown is scheduled to end.

Central officials said on Sunday that they discussed with states a “containment strategy” that hinges on identifying and cordoning off hot spot areas.

This strategy could be crucial to lifting the three-week lockdown in force since March 25 without risking a resurgence of the disease. As on Sunday, cases have been reported from 274 of the country’s 718 districts. Twenty-one of the 230 districts in nine states are considered hot spots.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a conference call on Thursday with chief ministers from across the country, had asked states to pitch in with ideas on how the curbs can be relaxed in a phased manner.

The number of Covid-19 cases in the world was 1.25 million on Sunday night, and the number of deaths stood at 68,000.