After 4 States, Centre May Send Teams To Others To Check Covid Spread

A day after high-level teams were sent to Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Manipur to monitor the fight against coronavirus, the centre is now considering sending high-level teams to other states that are seeing a rise in virus cases.

Delhi, Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Rajasthan are the five states that reported the highest number of cases in the last 24 hours.

The possible plan comes on a day India's coronavirus caseload passed 90 lakh or nine million. The country, world's second-worst-hit, has now also registered more than 1.32 lakh deaths from the disease, according to the latest official figures from the Union Health Ministry. It is after 47 days that India reported more news cases (45,882) than recoveries (44,807) in a single day.

The government has advised states to increase testing levels to track patients who may have been undetected or missed out. States have also been advised to go for an aggressive and widespread method of testing to identify these undetected cases.

On Thursday, high-level teams were sent to Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Manipur where they will visit districts reporting high number of COVID-19 cases and support efforts towards strengthening containment, surveillance, testing and efficient clinical management of positive cases.

While AIIMS chief Dr Randeep Guleria is leading the three-member team to Haryana, Dr VK Paul, Member (Health), Niti Aayog heads the Rajasthan team.

The Health ministry said Dr SK Singh, director of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), will be leading the team to Gujarat while Dr L Swasticharan of the Directorate General Of Health Services (DGHS) is heading the Manipur team.

Maharashtra remains the top affected state in the country with over 17.63 lakh total cases Other states in the top-5 list include Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.