New Delhi, July 30: The second last day of July brought good news for India, a country, which had suffered a huge blow in the hands of Novel Coronavirus, second only to the US and Brazil, witnessed a ray of hope on Thursday, after reaching the landmark achievement of more than 10 lakh recoveries, till now.
However, on the grimmer side, the peninsular nation registered the biggest ever 24-hour rise of 52,123 cases and witnessed loss of 775 lives in the same period.
The death toll has now mounted to 34,968, while the overall tally of cases has now risen to 15,83,792.
The spurt in cases, according to observers, owed to the high-number of testing that the country was conducting from the past few days. The country tested more than 4,46,642 samples on Thursday.
The average daily tests (on a rolling week-on-week basis) have increased from 2.4 lakh in the first week of July to more than 4.68 lakh in the last week of July.
India, from past some days, has seen a drop in mortality rate.
‘The average death rate of the country is 2.21 per cent today, but there are 24 states of the country, where the Corona death rate is less than the national average,’ a Union Health Ministry official said.
The death rate was 2.43 per cent on July 21 and 3.36 per cent on June 17.
According to MHA official Rajesh Bhushan, the positive rate of infection is also improving continuously. Going by the data for the past seven days, the positive rate in 21 states of the country is less than 10 per cent.
Positive rates in Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan are less than five per cent. In case of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry and Odisha, the positive rates are more than 10 per cent.
Despicable Act
In a staggering incident, a laboratory technician in Maharashtra was booked for rape after he took vaginal swabs to conduct Coronavirus tests on a patient, senior Police Inspector of Badnera, Punjabrao Wanjari said.
According to the official, a 24-year-old girl went to take the COVID-19 test after her colleague at a local mall was found positive. However, the lab technician told her that it was essential to take vaginal swabs for accurate test results for Coronavirus.
After the test, the girl discussed the incident with her brother, who inquired with doctors and came to know that there is no such test for the contagion.
The technician has been booked under IPC Sections 354 and 376, following a complaint and further probe was underway, the official added.
Healing touch of Ayurveda
The All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA), New Delhi has started providing free testing and treatment to patients in its COVID 19 Health Centre (CHC). Union Ayush Minister Shri Shripad Yesso Naik visited the CHC on 28th July 2020 to review the arrangements at the Centre for treatment of COVID-19 patients. During the visit, the minister announced that CHC will provide free of cost testing and treatment facilities to all the patients.
He also inaugurated the Intensive Care Unit of CHC which has been equipped with ventilator facility and all other standard provisions of ICU. AIIA has also been designated as COVID-19 testing centre (RT-PCR and Rapid antigen testing) by Government of Delhi. A COVID Call Centre has been established at AIIA for handling queries related to COVID 19 being raised by the general public telephonically.
Khadi in demand
As the popularity of the Khadi Face Masks grows across the country due to its fine quality and affordable price, the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has received a purchase order from Indian Red Cross Society to supply 1.80 lakh face masks.
As per KVIC, the IRCS masks will be made of 100 per cent double-twisted handcrafted cotton fabric in brown colour with red piping. KVIC has especially designed these double-layered cotton masks for the Indian Red Cross Society as per the samples provided by them.
The mask will have suitably printed IRCS logo on the left side and the Khadi India tag on the right side. The supply of masks will begin by next month. The execution of this order will require over 20,000 meter of fabric which will generate 9000 additional man days for the Khadi artisans.
Building infrastructure amid pandemic
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister of Mauritius Pravind Jugnauth, today, jointly inaugurated the new Supreme Court building in Mauritius through video conference.
The building is the first India assisted infrastructure project within the capital city of Port Louis to be inaugurated after the Covid pandemic.
The landmark project has been completed with grant assistance of USD 28.12 million from the Government of India.
Speaking on the occasion, Prime Minister Modi noted the importance of human-centric approach as the underlying philosophy of India’s development cooperation and commended the role of people-oriented infrastructure projects in further cementing the close ties between India and Mauritius.
Global Scenario
The global tally of infected by the novel Coronavirus surpassed 17 million on Thursday, Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering said. According to the latest statistics, the tally across the world stood at 17,029,155 while the death toll has reached 667,011.
The United States was the worst affected country with 4,423,917 cases and 150,713 fatalities, followed by Brazil with 2,552,265 cases and 90,134 deaths. Nations having more than 300,000 cases include India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Britain.
