The Union Health Ministry on Saturday asserted India’s response to COVID-19 has been “proactive” and that the government has followed a “graded approach” towards the pandemic.
Addressing the daily briefing on the current situation, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said that there are 586 COVID-19 dedicated hospitals and more than 1 lakh isolation beds in the country.
Elaborating on the importance of lockdown and containment measures to fight the Coronavirus pandemic, the health official said “without measures, India would have had 8.2 lakh cases by April 15.
The apparent warning comes as Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier in the day agreed with the states that the 21-day lockdown should be extended by another two weeks till April 30 to contain the deadly virus.
According to government sources, the Centre is considering requests by the states to extend the COVID-19 lockdown and an official announcement is expected to made soon.
Agarwal further said that the Government’s goal is to implement containment policy, containment action plan, contact tracing and clinical management of COVID-19 patients in proper manner, as per process, in coordination with states.
In coordination with the states, the Government said it is ensuring supply of PPE kits, N95 masks, testing kits and ventilators.
Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) informed that 1,71,718 samples have so far been tested for the Coronavirus, out of which 16,564 samples were tested yesterday.
Of these 16,564 samples, 14,210 tests were conducted in ICMR labs. Private labs have also conducted over 2,000 COVID-19 tests.
ICMR network has 146 labs in the country while there are 67 labs in the private sector that conduct tests for coronavirus.
As of Saturday, India’s total number of Coronavirus cases has risen to 7447 with 239 fatalities. The country marked its sharpest rise with 40 deaths and 1035 new cases of infection in the last 24 hours.
However, the Government has maintained that there has been no ‘community transmission’ in the country yet.