Coronavirus update: Doubling rate has hastened to 10 days

The doubling rate of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infections in India has reduced to 10 days from 12 days. Union health ministry joint secretary Lav Agarwal said May 8, 2020 the rising number of cases in the past few days has led to this development, which is worrying. This is significant because the government has been claiming that the lockdown has helped it achieve a long doubling rate.

• Of all active patients, 3.2 per cent require oxygen support, 4.7 per cent need intensive care unit facility and 1.1 per cent ventilators.
• 5,231 railway coaches have been repurposed as hospital beds for mild and very mild COVID-19 cases, stationed at 215 stations, Agarwal said.
• Indian Railways will care for patients at 85 stations with the help of 2,500 of its doctors and 35,000 paramedics. At other stations, state governments workforces will be needed.
• Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has launched its much-awaited, multi-centre randomised and controlled clinical trial for convalescent plasma as a treatment for treating COVID-19 kits. ICMR has so far approved 21 medical institutions — four from Gujarat, two from Rajasthan, one in Punjab, five in Maharashtra, two  each from Madhya Pradhesh, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and one each in Karnataka, Telangana and Chandigarh. Many states are already using it.
• India has already lost 1,899 lives to the pandemic, accpording to independent aggregator Covid19india.org.
• The tally of infected reached 57,332.
• Of them, 38,388 were active cases.
• Until now, 17,041 patients have been cured / discharged.
• More than that number — 17,974 patients — were present in Maharashtra alone. Its death toll was at 694.
• Mumbai accounted for 11,394; neighbouring Thane district had 1,889. Pune had 2,129.
• Gujarat’s case count rose to 7,013, with 425 fatalities making for a high death rate.
• Tamil Nadu’s case count was at 6,009; it, however, has managed to contain deaths at 40.
• Odisha registered a spike of over 50 cases; most of the patients, like the previous day, were migrangts from Gujarat.

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