India’s Covid-19 cases cross 33000-mark, recovery rate improves to 25.19 pc

New Delhi, (thestates.news)Three days ahead of the proposed removal of nationwide lockdown, India reported 1,823 fresh coronavirus cases and 67 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the tally to 33,610 and fatalities to 1075, while the recovery rate improved to 25.19 per cent.
The country’s recovery rate has climbed from 13.06 per cent 14 days ago to 25.19 per cent by Thursday, the Ministry said, terming it as a “positive sign.”
‘If we look at the doubling time of COVID-19 cases, we find that the national average is 11 days now, compared to 3.4 days before lockdown,’ said Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health.
On the topic of plasma therapy on for treatment of Covid-19, Mr Agarwal clarified, “As far as testing and treatment protocol is concerned we have to use RT-PCR test only.”
‘RT-PCR testing facility has been progressively scaled up, now we have 292 government labs and 97 private laboratories across the country for COVID-19 testing. Yesterday, we did as many as 58,686 tests. On an average in last 5 days, 49,800 tests have been done per day,’ he added.
‘States, Union Territories having doubling rate between 11 days to 20 days include Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Punjab,’ he said and added, ‘those having doubling rate between 20 days to 40 days are Karnataka, Ladakh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Kerala.’
Officials also said states like Assam, Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh have a doubling rate of more than 40 days.
Noted economist and former Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan, in an interaction with former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, said India should lift the lockdown in a measured way and that it needs Rs 65,000 crore to help poor in the country.
‘It is easy to have a lockdown forever,’ Mr Rajan said and added, ‘but that would not be sustainable for Indian economy. We need to be clever in lifting the lockdown. We need to open up in a measured way as India does not have capacity to feed people for long’.
Karnataka government has prepared a list of 10,823 people from the State, who are stranded in different parts of the world and is working on a comprehensive plan to fly them back.
Manipur government is giving financial assistance of Rs 2000 to every person from the state who were stranded in other states.

Chief Minister N Biren announced in a social network platform that Rs 7.07 cr were used from the CM Covid Fund to help the stranded people.(uni)