Health Ministry says 402 patients recovered in country so far; 773 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported during last 24 hrs

New Delhi: Health and Family Welfare Ministry has said that a total of 773 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 or novel coronavirus have been reported in the country during the last 24 hours taking the total number of cases to 5,194. The Ministry said that 402 patients have recovered so far and 149 deaths have been reported in the country so far.

Indian Council of Medical Research has said that a total of one lakh fourteen thousand fifteen samples have been tested so far including 12 thousand 584 which were tested yesterday. ICMR has approved 136 government laboratories and three collection centres to conduct the test of COVID-19. In addition, 63 private laboratories’ chains have also been given approval for the testing.

Health and Family Welfare Ministry has said that classification of health facilities and hospitals have been done to deal with the corona patients in the country. In a briefing yesterday, Joint Secretary in Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Lav Agarwal said that three types of healt-care facilities will be set up for various categories of COVID-19 cases as a mechanism to provide care to COVID-19 patients. He said, these three types are covid care centres, dedicated covid health centres and dedicated covid hospitals.

In a statement, the Ministry has said that all three types of COVID-19 dedicated facilities will have separate ear marked areas for suspect and confirmed cases. The Ministry said, suspect and confirmed cases should not be allowed to mix under any circumstances. It said, all suspect cases, irrespective of severity of their disease will be tested for COVID-19.

Quoting a recent study of Indian Council of Medical Research, Mr. Agrwal said, if one COVID-19 patient does not follow lock down orders or practice social distancing, then the patient can infect 406 people in 30 days. Quoting the Health Minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, he said, social distancing is social vaccine to manage the Covid-19. He urged the people to adopt the social distancing measure to deal with the corona virus.