India on Tuesday witnessed the highest ever increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths in a single day as infections shot up by 3,875 to 46,711 and the death toll rose by 194 to 1,583.
The Centre attributed the sharp spike to delayed reporting of cases and deaths by certain states and made a fresh appeal for timely reporting of cases and effective clinical management of patients infected by the disease.
“We followed up with certain states as we were not receiving reports of cases and deaths on time from them. Now, the cases have been reported and there is a sudden spike in deaths reported in the last 24 hours,” Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Heath Ministry, told reporters here.
The Centre and West Bengal government were in a tense stand-off over the management of COVID-19 outbreak in the state and relentless efforts by the Inter-Ministerial Central Team led by Apurva Chandra appear to have paid off.
Last week, the Centre had identified 20 worst-hit districts and despatched teams of public health experts to coordinate with health authorities there in effective management of the outbreak.
“The teams are already coordinating with the districts assigned to them,” Agarwal said.
At 583, Maharashtra has reported the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19, followed by Gujarat (319), Madhya Pradesh (176), West Bengal (133), Rajasthan (77) and Delhi (64).
In terms of total confirmed cases, Maharashtra has reported 14,541 infections since the COVID-19 outbreak was reported in India on January 30, followed by Gujarat (5,804), Delhi (4,898), Tamil Nadu (3,550), Rajasthan (3,061) and Madhya Pradesh (3,049).
Agarwal said India has reported the outbreak in small clusters, while some limited areas have large outbreak situations.
“We are very comfortable in the management of the outbreak. However, since we are dealing with an infectious disease, any laxity at the field level will have its consequences,” he said.
On the brighter side, the number of patients recovering from the disease has also been increasing steadily as 13,160 persons have been recovered and discharged from hospitals since the outbreak was first reported on January 30.