New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Friday said that the novel coronavirus is doubling in 6.2 days presently while the doubling rate was three days before the lockdown.
Addressing its daily press conference over the coronavirus outbreak in the country, the Health Ministry said that the doubling rate is lower than the national level in 19 states and UTs- Kerala, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Ladakh, Puducherry, Delhi, Bihar, Odisha, TN, Andhra Pradesh , UP, Punjab, Assam, Tripura etc.
"Before lockdown, doubling rate of COVID-19 cases was about 3 days, but according to data in the past 7 days, the doubling rate of cases now stands at 6.2 days. Doubling rate in 19 States, Union Territories are even lower than average doubling rate," Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said, as quoted by news agency ANI.
The government had imposed a 21-day lockdown on March 24, saying it was the only way to combat the novel coronavirus. The lockdown was then extended till May 3 amid the surge in the number of coronavirus cases.
Agarwal said that the government's focus is on speeding up vaccine development and it is working on recombinant BCG, convalescent plasma therapy and monoclonal antibodies to fight the dreadful infection.
He further said that the ratio between recovered COVID-19 patients and deaths stands at 80:20 in India which is higher than that in several other counties.
"We have been witnessing average growth factor at 1.2 since April 1 which stood at 2.1 (average) between March 15- March 31. Hence, there is 40 per cent decline in average growth factor even as we increased COVID-19 testings," Agarwal said.
He also informed reporters that 1,919 dedicated COVID-19 hospitals with 1.73 lakh isolation beds and 21,800 ICU beds have been readied till now.
Agarwal further informed that five lakh rapid antibody testing kits, which arrived from China on Thursday, are being distributed to states for districts with high case burden.
Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said that the mutation of the coronavirus doesn’t happen too quickly and whatever vaccine comes out now, it will work in the future as well.
"ICMR will begin a study next week. Till we don’t have definitive results from this, we won’t recommend it even for health workers," ICMR official Dr. Gangakhedkar on being asked about the use of BCG vaccine to fight coronavirus.
The novel coronavirus has affected over 13,300 people and claimed the lives of 437 in India so far.
"Out of these, 28,340 tests were conducted on Thursday, of which 23,932 were done at 183 laboratories under ICMR network and the rest at 80 private labs," he said.