Coronavirus Pandemic April 21 Live Updates: India is seeing a fresh surge in Covid cases and also, related deaths. The state governments including the national capital have already started taking measures like mandatory wearing of masks. The move is a precautionary step as there is a fear of fourth wave that has been creating a lot of anxiety in people in recent days. But is it time to bring back rest of the Covid restrictions like a heavy cap on public gathering? According to WHO Covid-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, the systems that have been put in place for surveillance, for testing, for sequencing should right now be reinforced and not taken apart.
According to the official data shared by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday morning, India recorded a single-day rise of 2,380 new Covid-19 infections. Active Coronavirus cases in the country have increased to 13,433. The number of deaths due to Covid increased to 56 in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that the active cases comprise 0.03 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate remained at 98.76 per cent.
India’s effective reproduction number (R-value) for Covid-19 increased to over 1 for the first time since mid-January. R-value is an indicator of how quickly a disease is spreading in the population. The R-value has been increasing steadily for the past week. It was 1.07 for April 12-18, according to Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher from Chennai’s Institute of Mathematical Sciences who has been tracking the country’s R-value since the beginning of the pandemic, reported IE. The R-value was 0.93 the previous week.
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