India, the third worst-hit country in the world after the United States and Brazil, now has 13,36,861 cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and 31,358 people have succumbed till date, Union health ministry data showed on Saturday.The country’s tally of the coronavirus disease mounted to more than 1.3 million after 48,916 Covid-19 cases and 757 fatalities due to the viral disease were reported in the last 24 hours.The number of Covid-19 cases saw a slight dip after India reported record new infections for two days in a row—45,720 on Thursday and 49,310 on Friday.
There are 456,071 active cases of the respiratory disease and 849,431 patients have been cured so far, according to the health ministry’s Covid-19 dashboard.
With 32,223 people discharged from hospitals between Friday and Saturday morning, India saw another highest single-day recovery for the fourth consecutive day. The recovery rate has now reached a new high of 63.53%.
The cumulative Covid-19 recoveries had crossed the 8 lakh-mark on Friday.
The Union health ministry has said it is formulating guidelines to help manage long-term complications that some people have reported after recovering from severe Covid-19 illness.
“The ministry is working on guidelines for discharged patients who may develop other complications post-recovery at home. It has been reported that a section of recovered patients may experience respiratory or heart-related issues, renal or liver complications, or even ophthalmological (eye-related) side-effects,” said Rajesh Bhushan, an officer on special duty, the health ministry.
“Our experts are working on putting a document together to guide people on what kind of long-term care would they require, and what are the issues that they may face,” Bhushan said on Friday.
Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu have been responsible for nearly two out of every three new infections reported till early July but the current spurt in Covid-19 cases have been reported from states such as Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.
Maharashtra reported 357,117 cases, Tamil Nadu 199749 and Delhi 128,389 so far, according to the Union health ministry’s dashboard.
The government has asked nine states adding to the present spurt of the active caseload in the country to urgently ramp up testing, strictly implement containment plan, augment health infrastructure and ensure effective clinical management.
Chief secretaries and health secretaries of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal and Assam were asked to review their response strategy and follow the central norms during a virtual review meeting chaired by the cabinet secretary.
“The cabinet secretary stressed the need for prompt and proper delineation of containment zones as per the guidelines of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; intensive contact tracing and house-to-house active case search within the Containment Zones so as to effectively break the chain of transmission. Buffer Zones to be identified outside the Containment Zones and continued surveillance of SARI/ILI cases needs to be undertaken,” the government said in a statement.
The attention of the states was drawn to the fact that early detection and timely clinical management is the key to contain the spread of Covid-19, it added.