Still unexplained
The hunt for the origins of Covid-19 has for the past four years been a tangled web of politics, power struggles, and international finger-pointing.
As coronavirus cases surge in the country, a central team, led by Joint Secretary of Health Ministry Lav Agarwal, will visit Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana between June 26 and 29 to coordinate with state officials in strengthening COVID-19 management efforts in those areas, the ministry said on Thursday.
India’s coronavirus tally rose to 4,90,401 on Friday which includes 1,89,463 active cases and 2,85,636 recovered cases. The death toll due to the virus has reached 15,301.
According to officials, the team will also review measures like testing, implementation of containment strategies, hospital and quarantine facilities, treatment protocols, among others undertaken by the state authorities for containment of COVID-19 and reduction of fatalities.
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Maharashtra has reported the highest number of 6,739 deaths and 1,42,900 cases. Gujarat has recorded 1,753 fatalities and 29,520 cases of the virus while Telangana has so far reported 230 deaths and 11,364 cases, according to health ministry data.
India registered its worst single-day increase in COVID-19 cases on Friday, recording more than 17,000 coronavirus infections, to push the overall tally to 4.90 lakh as the number of fatalities also jumped by 407, the Union Health Ministry said.
The ministry said there are 33.39 COVID-19 cases in India for every one lakh population, against the global average of 114.67. Also, the country has 1.06 deaths per lakh population, which is among the lowest in the world, while the global average is 6.24, it said.
Following efforts to ramp up facilities across the nation, there are in total 1,007 diagnostic labs, of which 734 are in the government sector and 273 private. From limited COVID-19 tests in January, a cumulative total of 75,60,782 samples have been tested up to June 24 with 2,07,871 tests being conducted on Wednesday.
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