India reported it’s first positive tested COVID-19 case on 30 Jan 2020 in Kerala. After 111 days country’s case count crossed 1 lakh mark on Monday despite the World’s biggest lockdown, surpassing China where the virus was originally discovered.
Today, according to the Health Ministry’s 8 am updates, 4,970 new cases have been registered across the country in the last 24 hours.
The Indian government imposed a complete shutdown in the country from Mar 25 when the country had less than 1,000 cases. Despite strict rules and constant guidelines from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Health Ministry, state government, and bodies, India now ranks 11th on the list of countries with the highest cases.
India’s pace is though slower than the countries which have accelerated up drastically. India took over 2 months to mark 10,000 cases with less than 2.5 lakhs testing conducted by authorities as of April 14. While the most recent 10,000 cases took merely 2 days with 75,150 tests carried out just on May 18. The cases rose even as several states announced an easing of lockdown guidelines after it was extended till May 31 by the central government.
The government has allowed the state governments to color code the zones according to the incidence of coronavirus cases thereby taking a final decision on what activities can be allowed in any particular area.
The center has made it clear that only quintessential movements should be allowed in containment zones. It has allowed buses and other vehicles to run. But flights and metro services shall remain closed.
On Monday, Health Minister, Harsh Vardhan joined 173rd World Health Assembly via video conferencing. He said, “Global collaboration is paramount. Governments, industry, and philanthropy must pool resources to pay for the risk, the research, manufacturing, and distribution, but with the condition that the rewards should be available to everyone, regardless of where they have been developed,”.
He added that “India undertook the COVID-19 challenge with the highest level of political commitment. Therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccines for the whole world is the only way out of this pandemic”.
120 countries joined the conference at the World Health Organisation (WHO) in pushing for a fair and complete evaluation of the global response into the coronavirus crisis as well as to examine the origin of the deadly infection.
India is the latest entry to the club of nations with more than one lakh cases. The U.S. leading with over 15 lakh cases, followed by Russia with more than 2.9 lakh cases and then Brazil with more than 2.5 lakh cases. More than 3,18,500 people have died from COVID-19 across the globe while 48 lakh cases are confirmed in 188 countries and territories with the recovery of 18 lakh people.
Image Courtesy- The Quint
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