By Aparna Banerjea| Live Mint| 20 April 2020| Read original news here|
The total number of novel coronavirus cases in India today surged to 17,656, after 1,540 fresh cases were reported in the last 24 hours, according to the latest data of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Along with that, the number of Covid-19 deaths in the country increased to 559, it said.
So far, India has 14,255 active cases. There are also 77 foreign nationals who are affected by the virus.
There are at least 2,841 patients who have been discharged or cured from the highly contagious disease and one has migrated from the country. According to the Monday morning data from the health ministry, at least 2,546 people have recovered from the infection, showing that the recovery rate has gone up to over 14.75%, an improvement over 14.2% on Sunday. The mortality rate for Covid-19 cases in India is around 3.2%. it added.
During the press briefing on Monday evening, Lav Aggrawal from Health Ministry said that since the lockdown has got implemented, the doubling rate for the virus infection has seen a significant improvement. “The duration of doubling rate for coronavirus which was 3.4 days before lockdown is now 7.5 days,” he said.
Aggrawal also added that the number of districts where no case has been reported in last 14 days has increased to 59.
Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar, ICMR said informed that out of 100 coronavirus patients, 80% are asymptomatic or show mild symptoms.
With more than 4,000 positive cases, Maharashtra remained the worst hit state. The total number of cases in the state surged to 4,203 with 223 deaths. The highest number of cases were reported from Mumbai with more than 2,724 positive Covid-19 patients.
Maharashtra was followed by Delhi, which has crossed 2,000-mark with 2,003 cases and45 deaths, according to the latest data. The other states that crossed the 1,400-mark in the number of coronavirus cases in descending order are Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. Uttar Pradesh became the next state in the country after these to top 1,000 cases.
Apart from Maharashtra and Delhi, the other most-affected states according to the deaths recorded are Gujarat (67), Telangana (21), Madhya Pradesh (74), Punjab (16), Karnataka (16), West Bengal (12), Jammu and Kashmir (5), Uttar Pradesh (17) Kerala (3), Jharkhand (2), Andhra Pradesh (20) Rajasthan (14) Haryana (3), Tamil Nadu (15) and Bihar (2), Meghalaya, Odisha, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and have reported one death each.
However, as a good news, all coronavirus positive cases in Goa and Manipur are now negative, informed respective state officials. Moreover, the health ministry added that Covid-19 growth has declined in Odisha and Kerala.
Here is the total coronavirus cases in India, state-wise:
Andaman and Nicobar Islands – 15
Andhra Pradesh – 722
Arunachal Pradesh – 1
Assam – 35
Bihar -96
Chandigarh – 26
Chhattisgarh – 36
Delhi – 2003
Goa – 7
Gujarat -1851
Haryana – 233
Himachal Pradesh – 39
Jammu and Kashmir – 350
Jharkhand – 42
Karnataka – 395
Kerala – 402
Ladakh – 18
Madhya Pradesh – 1485
Maharashtra – 4203
Manipur – 2
Meghalaya – 11
Mizoram – 1
Odisha – 68
Puducherry – 7
Punjab – 219
Rajasthan – 1478
Tamil Nadu – 1477
Telangana – 873
Tripura – 2
Uttarakhand – 44
Uttar Pradesh – 1176
West Bengal – 339
Globally, the novel coronavirus cases have shot past 2.4 million with over 1.65 million deaths, according to the latest Johns Hopkins University data. The United States has by far the world’s largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases, with more than 740,000 infections and over 40,000 deaths.
Spain (198,674 cases and 20,453 deaths), Italy (178,972 cases and 23,660 deaths), France (154,098 cases and 19,718 deaths), Germany (145,742 cases and 4,642 deaths) and United Kingdom (121,172 cases and 16,060 deaths) are among the other badly-hit countries.