INDIA RECORDS HIGHEST SINGLE-DAY SPIKE OF 6,000 CASES; RBI AGAIN CUTS RATES

New Delhi, (thestates.news)  India on Friday recorded highest single-day spike of about 6,000 cases, even though the government claimed that it had prevented an “exponential rise situation” like in western world, while the RBI again cut key rates in an attempt to push more liquidity into the battered economy.
According to Union Health Ministry, the country reported 148 new fatalities and 6,088 positive cases, taking the number of deaths to 3,583 and total cases to 1,18,447.
The peninsular nation has currently 66,330 active cases, which reveals that the front line medics were successful in saving a total of 48,533 lives so far.
The financial capital — Mumbai — crossed the grim mark of 25,000 cases with 1,382 new infections, as per an update by the city’s governing authority.
Though the figures were alarming, the government yet again focused on the brighter side of the pandemic response.
The government claimed that over two lakh lives were saved due to the timely implementation of nationwide lockdown on March 25.
The Reserve Bank of India cut it’s key rates for the second time in two months to arrest the economic fallout from ongoing nationwide lockdown amid Covid-19. It slashed Repo rate by 40 basis points to 4 pc.
On March 27, the apex bank had cut repo rate by 75 basis points from 5.15 to 4.40 pc, reduced the reverse repo rate to 3.35 per cent while extended the moratorium on loan repayments by three more months.
The Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation stated that the lockdown has apparently helped in trimming the spread of the virus.
“The growth rate of COVID-19 cases has witnessed a steady fall from April 3 when the lockdown was able to put a brake on the transmission. The number of cases today would have been much higher, had lockdown not been implemented”, Empowered Group 1 chairman VK Paul said during a press briefing.
“According to Boston Consulting Group model, lockdown has saved between 1.2 – 2.1 lakh lives as the number of COVID-19 cases averted was between 36-70 lakh “, Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation said.
“We are fully confident that lockdown, with full public cooperation, has reaped rich dividends,” the ministry said.
The ministry presented different estimates and models of the cases.uni