Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Health Lav Agarwal on Monday said the rate at which the number of COVID-19 cases in the country was doubling in the last one week improved to 7.5 days, as against 3.4 days before the nationwide lockdown was imposed.
According to the latest data provided by him, at the daily media briefing citing the rate of doubling of infection across the country. He, however, provided the data of only 18 states and UTs. The rated of doubling of infection as provided by him were between 8.5 and 72.2 days.
It could not be immediately known which states had registered the doubling time of 7.5 or less.
Giving details of state-wise doubling time of infection, he said as per data on April 19, 18 states and UTs have shown an improvement over the national average doubling rate. Addressing reporters, Agarwal said the states and UTs where the doubling rate is less than 20 days are Delhi with 8.5 days, Karnataka 9.2 days, Telangana 9.4 days, Andhra Pradesh 10.6 days, Jammu and Kashmir 11.5 days, Punjab 13.1 days, Chhattisgarh 13.3 days, Tamil Nadu 14 days and Bihar 16.4 days. Places where the doubling time is between 20 days to 30 days include Andaman and Nicobar Islands at 20.1 days.
In Haryana, the cases are doubling in 21 days, in Himachal Pradesh 24.5 days, Chandigarh 25.4 days, Assam 25.8 days, Uttarakhand 26.6 days and Ladakh 26.6 days. States with doubling time more than 30 days are Odisha and Kerala which reported time of 39.8 and 72.2 days respectively, Agarwal said
On a question over rapid antibody tests coming under scanner over quality issues, Head of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases at Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Raman R Gangakhedkar said that worldwide rapid tests are not used for individual diagnosis.
“The rapid antibody test is not used for individual diagnosis, as we don’t know how powerful the antibody developed will be against the virus. It can be used for surveillance. And consistent errors will not affect assessment of infection trends in epidemiological surveys,” he said.
Over some states raising concerns over the quality of the kits, he said rapid antibody tests are CE-IVD approved and quality tests were already done to check their sensitivity and specificity as claimed and they were found to be satisfactory.
The ICMR scientist said out of 100 infected people 80 do not show any symptoms and if tested they might be positive. Agarwal added that 80 per cent of the patients are asymptomatic or will have mild symptoms, around 15 per cent patients may turn into severe cases and patients turn critical.