Published 18:05 IST, April 23rd 2020
Empowered Group Chairman reveals success of India's COVID-19 fight during the lockdown
CK Mishra, the Chairman of Empowered Group 2 spoke about the success of India's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic during the 30-day lockdown period
Addressing a press briefing on Thursday, CK Mishra- Union Environment Secretary and the Chairman of Empowered Group 2 set up by the Centre spoke about the success of India's fight against COVID-19 during the 30-day lockdown period. He observed that the mantra of the Union government is to save lives and treat people. Moreover, he revealed that India had been able to contain the transmission of COVID-19, increase the doubling days, ramp up the scale of testing and prepare for the future in the lockdown period.
CK Mishra remarked, "Today, one month of the lockdown has been completed. What has this 30-day lockdown done? I know that this has brought hardship to many people, but we must express our gratitude to all the people of India who are facing these hardships today so that we can save lives in the future. Our main mantra is how to save lives and how to treat people. We have been able to cut transmission, minimize spread, and increase the doubling days as Lav Aggarwal has always been speaking to you. Second, we have been able to consistently ramp up our testing. And this, we have been utilizing our time gainfully to prepare for the future if the virus spreads further."
'In these 30 days, we remained more or less stable'
Thereafter, Mishra highlighted that India had increased its COVID-19 testing from 14,915 tests on March 23 to more than 5 lakh tests on April 22. At the same time, he acknowledged that it was essential to continuously ramp up testing in the country. Showing a graph, he pointed out that post-lockdown, India's confirmed cases had grown 16 times in comparison to the testing which has increased 24 times. According to Mishra, India had done much better than the US, the UK and Italy as far as the confirmation rate of COVID-19 cases after the detection of the 400th case.
"In these 30 days, we remained more or less stable. One of the critical tools we have used is testing. On March 23, we had conducted 14,915 tests in the entire country. On April 22, we have done more than 5 lakh tests. If you do a rough calculation, it is about 33 times in 30 days. But, we are conscious of the fact that this is not enough and we have to continuously move ahead and ramp up the testing in this country," Mishra added.
The growth of cases has been more or less linear than exponential with around 4-4.5% of the total tested persons turning out to be positive for COVID-19. He also explained the hospital structure for COVID-19 and noted that the number of dedicated hospitals and isolation beds has increased 3.5 times and 3.6 times respectively since the last one month. Finally, he stated that the basic principle was to test, cure and ensure that mortality is very low.
Updated 18:05 IST, April 23rd 2020