Coronavirus: Maharashtra has the highest number of coronavirus cases in India
India reported over 2,000 coronavirus deaths for the first time after states updated the number of those who died due to the highly contagious disease. The country has so far reported 3,54,065 coronavirus cases; 1,86,935 have recovered. The number of dead is 11,903. The recovery rate is at 52.79 per cent. Maharashtra has the highest number of cases in the country. The number of fatalities across the state and its capital Mumbai went up sharply on Tuesday as the records were updated with 1,328 more cases. Mumbai now has 3,167 coronavirus-linked deaths, records show. The state's total is 5,537, including 81 deaths reported on Tuesday.
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The data on the Health Ministry's website that shows the spike in the number of deaths came after the states including Delhi and Maharashtra reconciled their data from previous days.
The highest number of samples was tested in the last 24 hours, according to government data. At least 1,63,187 have been tested during this period, taking the total samples tested to 60,84,256. A total of 6.72 per cent was tested positive in the last 24 hours.
Six chief ministers will speak in a video call with Prime Minister Narendra Modi today to discuss the coronavirus outbreak in the country and the way forward after the current phase of the lockdown ends on June 30.
The Delhi government has started converting the Radha Soami Spiritual Centre in south Delhi into the world's largest temporary COVID-19 care facility with 10,000 beds.
With hospitals already severely stretched, India is now bracing for the monsoon and possibility of mosquito-borne illnesses, with an overwhelmed army of public health workers the only defence.
A particular problem is that many seasonal illnesses have symptoms that are virtually indistinguishable from coronavirus, such as fever, breathing difficulties and loss of appetite. This means more testing, more isolation beds and more protective equipment will be needed to ensure that patients are diagnosed correctly and not exposed to coronavirus too.
A months-long lockdown to prevent the epidemic from spreading left Mumbai with an acute shortage of sanitation workers. Thousands of public health workers who fumigate neighbourhoods to kill disease-carrying mosquitoes had to delay those crucial efforts for two months to focus on sanitation instead.
Giving low doses of the generic steroid drug dexamethasone to patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 reduced death rates by around a third among those with the most severe cases of infection, trial data showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
The centre last week added new symptoms of COVID-19 in a document published for use by health professionals as a reference. "Loss of smell and taste" has been added to a list of nine other symptoms in the document "Clinical Management Protocol: COVID-19".
The Health Ministry in the document says direct person-to-person transmission occurs through close contact, mainly through respiratory droplets that are released when the infected person coughs, sneezes or talks.
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