With as many as 386 new cases of COVID-19 reported in the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry on Wednesday, 1 April, said that the spike was “not a national trend” and was primarily due to travel by those who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation.
Addressing the daily press briefing, Joint Secretary in Health Ministry Lav Agarwal said that till now there are 1,637 COVID-19 cases in the country out of which 386 new positive cases were reported in the last 24 hours.
While there are 1,466 active coronavirus cases, 132 people have been cured/discharged and one is a migrated patient.
Giving details about the necessary arrangements being made by the government to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, Agarwal told the press that the railways is preparing to set up 3.2 lakh isolation beds by modifying 20,000 train coaches. Modification of 5,000 coaches for the purpose has already begun, he said.
‘Lifeline’ flights have also been started to transport testing kits, medicines, masks and other essentials, he added said.
Authorities launched a nationwide search on Tuesday for participants of a huge religious gathering held earlier this month in the national capital's Nizamuddin area, which has become the new epicentre of the deadly virus pandemic amid fears that thousands present there could have carried the infection to the length and breadth of the country.
Thousands of participants of the Tablighi Jamaat held in mid-March in Nizamuddin, which is also home to a famous Dargah, are known to have returned to their homes in virtually every state including Telangana, West Bengal, Karnataka, and Gujarat. Many of these states have reported COVID-19 cases linked to this congregation.
Several fresh cases of the infection were reported on Tuesday from Delhi, Maharashtra, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, and Bihar, among other places.
Officials have been saying that some mismatch occurs due to delay in assigning certain cases to a particular state after doing necessary checks.
The central government separately told the Supreme Court it has taken “proactive and preemptive timely steps” to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, but termed fake news as the biggest hindrance and sought a direction for the media not to publish any COVID-19 information without ascertaining facts with authorities.
The apex court asked the Centre to prevent migration of people due to coronavirus and to set up within 24 hours a portal for disseminating real-time information on the pandemic to counter the panic being spread through fake news.
It also said, “panic will destroy more lives than the virus” and asked the Centre to get trained counsellors and community leaders of all faiths to calm down the migrants.
The Union Health Ministry lamented that the number of hotspots has risen due to “lack of people’s support and delay in timely detection” of the cases.
Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said the government is using cluster containment strategies and doing rigorous contact tracing in these hotspots to check the virus from further spreading.
Agarwal, however, said it was not the time to find faults but to take action.
(With inputs from PTI.)
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