A million under watch for Covid-19 symptoms, disease spread limited: Govt

The full effect of national lockdown to contain the coronavirus would be in May, says chief of committee looking at medical emergency management.

Around a million people are under surveillance for Covid-19 symptoms across the country even as the number of cases could see a spike in the first week of May, government officials said in the daily briefing on Friday.
 

“We are still in the middle stage of Covid in the second phase of lockdown. We will see an increase in the coming days. The disease is limited, and we are ready for the next stage,” said V K Paul, chairman of an empowered group looking at medical emergency management. He said it takes two weeks to see the effect of the lockdown and that it will be visible in the first and second week of May.
 

The total confirmed Covid-19 cases in India was 23,452 and  the death toll was 723 on Friday. According to the Health Ministry data, the doubling rate of confirmed cases for the week ending April 20, was 8.6 days and in the last three days it has slowed down to 10 days. “Some mathematical projections have shown that had we not taken any steps the total number of cases would have reached over a hundred thousand right now,” Paul said.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said Covid-19 mortality rate was at 3 per cent and recovery rate at above 20 per cent. Nationwide cases of confirmed coronavirus infections rose on Friday by over 1,750 — the maximum for a day.
 

Paul also said the government has presented the true picture of the Covid situation in India and there are no undercurrents of a spread that might be going unchecked.

“We have studied various data sets through the usage of the Jan Arogya scheme, our routine surveillance of pneumonia and fever cases.  There are no queues in front of hospitals. There is no spike in demand for drugs of these diseases, a drug utilisation study showed.”

The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has led the surveillance of suspected Covid cases through a house-to-house survey and also based on the data received from the bureau of immigration to contain the spread of the disease.

“We have coordinated from district to state to the national level to establish a network of monitoring and supervision. We are keeping a close watch on 9,45,000 people, and the moment they develop symptoms we will take their samples for testing,” said S K Singh, director, NCDC.
 

While Paul did not respond to whether India should increase the period of lockdown, he said that the strategy for testing will be changed according to requirements of the situation. He was responding to a query on whether 500,000 tests are enough to decide that the lockdown has helped and whether it should be increased in May.
 

“Testing is a nuanced approach and has stood the test of time. We will recalibrate and increase our capacity with the need,” Paul added.