There has been a 40% decline in growth of COVID-19 cases in India, the Health Ministry said in its daily briefing on Friday.
Here are the key takeaways from the briefing:
– Till now 13387 confirmed cases and 437 deaths have been reported. In the last 24 hours, 1007 new cases and 23 deaths were reported.
– 5 lakh rapid antibody testing kits are being distributed to states and districts where high case burden has been observed
– Till now 3,19,400 patients have been tested. On April 16, 28,340 tests were done.
– 1,749 people have been recovered so far which means there is a recovery rate of 13.06% in COVID-19 cases.
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– National doubling rate on average is 6.2 days. Before the lockdown, it was 3 days. 19 states/UTs have a doubling rate less than the average rate of India
– The ratio between recovered COVID-19 patients and deaths stands at 80:20 in India which is higher than that in several other counties
– CSIR labs are working on indigenous production of antivirals that have shown promise: Lav Agarwal
– We are aiming to make 10 lakh RTPCR kits by the month of May indigenously
– There are currently 1919 dedicated hospitals in the country now with over 1,73,000 isolation beds and over 21000 ICU beds.
– In the next week, ICMR will start a study on BCG vaccine. That will help us decide whether it should be used in health workers: Dr R R Gangakhedkar, ICMR