India has managed to maintain a linear growth of COVID-19 cases over the one month period during its lockdown, the Union Health Ministry said on Thursday even as the country reported over 1,409 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total number of cases to 21,700 with 16,689 active ones.
Data | How fast are India’s coronavirus cases doubling since the lockdown?
There have been over 4,324 recoveries, which takes the recovery rate to 19.89 %, the Health Ministry said. A total of 686 deaths have been reported, with 34 in the past 24 hours.
It added that as on Thursday, there are 12 districts that did not have a fresh case in the last 28 days or more. Since April 21, eight new districts have been added including — Chitradurga (Karnataka), Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh), Imphal West (Manipur), Aizawl West (Mizoram), Bhadradri Kothagudem (Telangana), Pilibhit (U.P.), SBS Nagar (Punjab) and South Goa (Goa). Also, 78 districts from 23 States/Union Territories have not reported any fresh cases during the last 14 days.
State Health Departments have put the nationwide death toll at 718 with 23, 034 cases of which 17, 428 are active cases. Maharashtra has 5,304 active cases with Mumbai reporting 478 new cases and eight deaths on Thursday taking its death toll to 168 and 4,232 cases.
“Despite a 24-fold increase in testing, the percentage of positive cases is not rising phenomenally when compared to the percentage of positive cases at the beginning of the lockdown,” said Chairman of the empowered group-2 C.K. Mishra.
Coronavirus | Post-lockdown, India’s infection growth rate has slowed down, says Ministry
“The growth of cases has been more or less linear, not exponential; this indicates that the strategies we have adopted have succeeded in containing the infection to a particular level,” he added.
“One crucial weapon we employed during the 30-day lockdown period is RT-