Central team to visit Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana to bolster COVID-19 management efforts

New Delhi, Jun 25 () A central team, led by Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry Lav Agarwal, will visit Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana between June 26 and 29 to coordinate with the state officials in strengthening COVID-19 management efforts in those areas, the ministry said on Thursday.

According to officials, the team will also review the measures undertaken by the states for containment of COVID-19.

Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases at 1,42,900. Gujarat has recorded 28,943 instances of the viral infection while Telangana has so far reported 10,331 cases, according to health ministry data.

India registered its worst single-day increase in COVID-19 cases on Thursday, recording more than 16,000 coronavirus infections, to push the overall tally to 4.73 lakh as the number of fatalities also jumped by 418, the Union Health Ministry said.

The ministry said there are 33.39 COVID-19 cases in India for every one lakh population, against the global average of 114.67. Also, the country has 1.06 deaths per lakh population, which is amongst the lowest in the world and the global average is 6.24.

Following efforts to ramp up facilities across the nation, there are in total 1,007 diagnostic labs, of which 734 are in the government sector and 273 private.

From limited COVID-19 tests in January, a cumulative total of 75,60,782 samples have been tested up to June 24 with 2,07,871 samples being tested on Wednesday. PLB NSD NSD