Covid-19 Tally Crosses 50,000

· 3,561 New Cases and 89 New Deaths Reported Over Past 24 hours

India’s Covid-19 tally as on May 7 is 52,952, a spike of 3,561 cases over the previous day’s 49,391 cases. Eighty nine persons have died over the past 24 hours, taking the toll from 1,694 on May 6 to 1,783 on May 7.

This is the second largest day-to-day increase in case numbers following May 5 when 3,875 new cases were recorded on a single day.

Of the confirmed cases, 15,267 have recovered, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan stated that 1.1 per cent of the cases were on ventilator; 3.3 per cent were receiving oxygen therapy and 4.8 per cent patients were admitted in intensive care units.

Harsh Vardhan reviewed Uttar Pradesh’s preparedness and ground situation on Thursday and said 66 of the 75 districts had Covid-19 cases. As on May 7, UP recorded 2,998 confirmed cases, with 1,130 recoveries and 60 deaths.

“Of the affected districts, 22 have less than five cases; 11 have five to 10 cases. However, districts of concern are Agra with 655 cases; Kanpur (292); Saharanpur (205); Meerut (175); Gautam Budh Nagar (193), currently reporting ten new cases per day; and Lucknow (231), reporting four to five new cases per day,” Vardhan added.

Vardhan told state officials that they should ramp up their severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) and influenza-like illness (ILI) surveillance. “Each district should be able to conduct a survey and find at least 250 patients who demonstrate SARI or ILI symptoms. In UP, only a few districts have implemented SARI and ILI surveillance properly. All districts should ramp up surveillance to ensure that unaffected districts are not affected,” he said.

Harsh Vardhan also said that Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH) had launched four clinical trials to study the effect of interventions like Ashwagandha, Yashtimadhu, Guduchi - Pippali and poly herbal formulation (AYUSH-64) in 25 states and in a population of five lakh to assess preventive potential of these interventions and improvement in quality of life in high-risk population.

One of the trial pits Ashwagandha against allopathy drug Hydroxychloroquine to see if it can be an effective preventive treatment in health care providers, Ministry of AYUSH has said.