India likely to witness peak in coronavirus COVID-19 cases in June-July: AIIMS director
Mangalore Today News Network
New Delhi, May 07, 2020: Even as India fights the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic on a war-footing taking all the necessary step to flatten the curve of the infection, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Director Randeep Guleria on Thursday warned that the country is yet to witness a peak in coronavirus COVID-19 cases in the months of June and July.
Guleria said that the positive cases will see a further increase in the coming months. He also added that there will be a decrease or halt in the number of cases only after the peak months or after two to three months, Zee reported.
He asserted that the government have to increase the number of COVID-19 quarantine and testing centres. Strict measures should be imposed in hotspots areas or zones, advised Guleria.
The battle against coronavirus is that of the people and they have to cooperate by observing basic rules like social distancing, using sanitisers and washing hands.
The fight against the pandemic will continue for a long time. In this way, there will be a change in everyone’s lifestyle. New normal rules like social distancing and wearing masks have to be inculcated while visiting shopping malls and movie theatres.
This comes at the heels of a meeting by Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan saying, “The testing capacity has increased in the country and it is 95,000 tests per day with 327 Government laboratories and 118 private laboratories. Cumulatively, 13,57,442 tests have been done so far for COVID-19.” He stated that as on May 7, a total of 52,952 cases have been reported from the country in which 15,266 persons have been cured and 1,783 deaths had occurred.
In the last 24 hours, 3561 new confirmed cases have been added and 1084 patients were found cured. He added that in comparison to other countries, India is in a better condition as the fatality rate is 3.3 per cent and the recovery rate is 28.83 per cent. He also added that there are 4.8 per cent patients in ICU, 1.1 per cent on ventilators and 3.3 per cent on oxygen support of the active cases.
He also informed that as on date, there are 180 districts with no new cases in less than 7 days, 180 districts with no new cases in 7-13 days, 164 districts which have not had any new case in 14-20 days and 136 districts with no new cases since the last 21-28 days. There are 13 States and UTs--Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir UT, Kerala, Ladakh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Odisha who had not reported any case in the last 24 hrs. While Daman & Diu, Sikkim, Nagaland and Lakshadweep have not reported a single case till date, Vardhan said.
The Union Minister stated that there are 130 hotspot districts, 284 non-hotspot districts and 319 non-affected districts in the country. He further added that as of now 821 dedicated COVID hospitals with 1,50,059 beds (Isolation beds- 1, 32,219 and ICU beds- 17,840) and 1,898 dedicated COVID Health Centres with 1,19,109 beds (Isolation beds- 1, 09,286 and ICU beds- 9,823) along with 7,569 quarantine centres are now available to combat COVID-19 in the country.