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It’s a mixed bag for India as far as Covid-19 cases are concerned. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, on the one hand, the situation is particularly serious in four States — Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and West Bengal — and on the other, new cases are doubling every week on an average across the country compared with three-and-a-half days prior to the lockdown.
India recorded 17,656 confirmed Covid-19 cases as on April 20, of which Maharashtra has 4,203, Madhya Pradesh 1,485, Rajasthan 1,478 and West Bengal 339. Of these, 2,842 persons have recovered and 559 have died.
Punya Salila Shrivastava, spokesperson in the Ministry of Home Affairs, said cases in places such as Jaipur in Rajasthan; Indore in Madhya Pradesh; Mumbai and Pune in Maharashtra; Kolkata, Howrah, 24 Paraganas North, Medinipur East, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Kalimpong in West Bengal, are yet to come under control.
Medical teams deployed
She said six inter-ministerial teams have been despatched to hotspots to supervise the readiness of the medical infrastructure in these States. On deployment of inter-ministerial teams to West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted: “The basis on which Centre is proposing to deploy teams in select districts, including a few in West Bengal under Disaster Management Act 2005, is unclear. I urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to share the criterion used for this. Until then, I am afraid, we will not be able to move ahead on this without valid reasons.”
On an optimistic note, Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), said new cases are now doubling every week now across India on an average, while before the lockdown, they were doubling every three-and-a-half days. In Delhi, cases are doubling every 8.5 days. The city recorded 1,069 cases on April 12, which doubled to 2003 cases on April 20.
All Covid-19 patients in Goa were discharged from hospital after recovery, and now the State has no active case, he said, adding that three districts — Mahe (Puducherry), Kodagu (Karnataka) and Pauri Garhwal (Uttrakhand) — have also not reported any fresh cases during the last 28 days.
Now, 59 additional districts from 23 States and UTs have not reported any fresh cases during the last 14 days.
On April 19, West Bengal’s Department of Health, in a complaint to the Indian Council of Medical Research, said test kits that are used to conduct reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests on throat and nasal swab samples were faulty.
Faulty kits
R Gangakhedkar, head, infectious diseases, ICMR, stated: “Some RT-PCR kits in West Bengal were not working well. These were kits of BGI company, which is approved by USFDA. While quality standards of these kits are good, there was just one problem; temperature control, which should be 20°C for these kits, may not have been maintained. Some tests therefore had to be repeated. The ICMR is now supplying 10,000 fresh kits to the Kolkata-based National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases to tide over this temporary crisis.”
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