New Delhi: As many as 227 new coronavirus cases and three deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours, the Centre said on Tuesday.
A total of 1,251 cases have been reported in the country so far.
“227 new cases of COVID-19 and three deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours, thus, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 1,251 and the number of deaths to 32 in the country,” Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, told media here.
He also said that the three deaths have been reported from Gujarat, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh.
“The sudden increase in the number of confirmed cases has been due to delay in informing the authorities,” Aggarwal added.
“To contain the spread of coronavirus, the ministry is working with the state governments on finding the contacts of the new cases which have been confirmed,” he further said.
Meanwhile, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Tuesday reviewed the COVID-19 sampling and testing strategy and said all efforts should be made to procure testing kits immediately for supply to laboratories.
The minister directed officials to ensure states have all the required facilities and do not face shortage of testing kits, reagents or equipment. Extra support will be given to states and union territories that do not have laboratories and testing facilities as well as to North Eastern states and the UT of Ladakh, the health ministry said in a statement.
There should be no comprise in the quality of testing kits procured by the government or private labs, Vardhan directed and said quality assessment of the kits will be done regularly.
He said for this a clear quality control mechanism and protocol needs to be developed and implemented by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) immediately.
The health minister held the review meeting with senior officials of the ICMR, Department of Science and Technology, Bio-technology and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). There was an elaborate discussion on issues like procurement of reagents, website integration, data management and analysis, dashboards, research studies both planned and done so far.
During the meeting, it was informed by ICMR director general that 129 government laboratories are functional with a testing capacity of 13,000 tests per day along with 49 NABL accredited private labs, the statement said.
The private chains have around 16000 collection centres. It was also informed that adequate test kits have been procured and disseminated across the states for any further eventualities.
He was also informed that rapid antibody test kits have been also ordered. As of now 38,442 tests have been done with 1,334 tests in private labs across the country, the statement said.
Further discussions were held with the officials of the Ministry of Science and Technology about the status of research into the developing solutions for handling COVID-19.
According to the statement, secretary Department of Science and Technology (DST), Dr Ashutosh Sharma informed that through mapping of the COVID-19 related technology capabilities in start-ups, academia, research and development labs and industry, over 500 entities in the areas of diagnostics, drugs, ventilators, protection gear, disinfecting systems, etc. have been identified.
“Over 200 proposals have been received in the last one week against the funding calls of DST, from which over 20 entities are under active consideration for support in the first phase, taking into account the relevance, cost, speed and scale of solutions to manage COVID-19,” Sharma said.
The minister informed that he also had a discussion with Health Ministers of the states and UTs about the actions being taken by Union Health Ministry, reviewed the status of preparedness of states and UTs. He also lauded the states for active surveillance, effective contact tracing and their preparedness for containment and management of COVID-19. (Agencies)
