United News of India
New Delhi, Apr 23: As the nation completed one-month under lockdown on Thursday to arrest the spread of novel coronavirus, as many as 34 people succumbed to the deadly virus in past 24 hours while 1,329 cases appeared, taking the tally to 21,700.
Union Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal in the daily briefing said the increase in the number of coronavirus cases in the country is ”more or less linear, not exponential.”
”We have been able to cut virus transmission, minimise the spread in 30 days of lockdown,” the senior health official asserted.
Environment Secretary CK Mishra said in last 30 days, the total number of tests, from over 15,000, rose to 5 lakh.
”If a rough calculation is done, it is about 33 times in 30 days. This is not enough and we need to ramp testing in this country,” he asserted.
According to the health ministry, 4,257 patients have been cured so far, bring the recovery rate to 19.89 per cent.
Due to financial strains occurring from coronavirus crisis, the government announced that it would not be able to pay additional installment of Dearness Allowance to Central government employees and Dearness Relief to Central government pensioners due from January 1, 2020.
Additional installments of DA and DR from July 1, 2020 and January 1, 2021 will also not be paid, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
Moreover, the hike in the DA and DR by four per cent last month, have also been put on hold.
President Ram Nath Kovind approved Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 which makes attack, act of violence and any kind of harassment against healthcare personnel fighting Covid-19 pandemic as cognisable and non-bailable offences, with imprisonment of three months to five years.
As the lockdown severely impacting the schoolers, Union Human Resource Development released an alternative academic calendars for primary and upper primary stage (Classes VI to VIII), developed by NCERT to engage students meaningfully during their stay through educational activities.
HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal said the calendar provides guidelines to teachers on the use of various technological and social media tools available for imparting education in fun-filled, interesting ways, which can be used by learner, parents and teachers even while at home.
Union Home Ministry Joint Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava in the daily briefing said that the Ministry has asked the State governments to exempt the services of care givers and attendants to senior citizens from the lockdown norms.
Agricultural research institutes, book shops and electric fan shops have been exempted and SoPs have been released on the sign-on and sign-off of Indian seafarers to ensure that they are not replaced by seafarers from other countries, she said.
