Press Briefing on the actions taken, preparedness & updates on COVID-19 :

• 1,489 persons have recovered.
  Total no. of cases – 12,380.
  Total no. of deaths reported – 414.
  In last 24 hours – 183 recoveries,
  37 deaths, 941 new #COVID2019 cases,
  325 districts where no cases have been reported
• 2,90,401 samples have been tested so far 30,043 samples were tested yesterday, out of which 26,331 tests were done in ICMR network.
• Two types of rapid #COVID2019 testing kits, amounting to a total of 5 lakh kits have arrived today. This test is not for early diagnosis. This will be used for surveillance, to monitor whether hot spots are growing or receding.
• If antibody test of a person turns out to be positive, this does not mean necessarily that one will not get infected ever again. In other words, even if antibody is present, this does not mean that the antibody will necessarily be effectively able to fight the virus.
• In Japan, 1 out of 11.7 tests turn out to be positive, which is among the highest in the world In India, 1 out of 24 tests come out to be positive Not all people belong to vulnerable groups Hence, can’t say our testing ratio is low.
• Our effort is not to miss out on any positive case We want to ensure that everyone is tested, as per properly laid down testing criteria What is important is the output, only 1 / 24 symptomatic patients tests +ve, a clear indication of our advance action.
• Rapid antibody tests are for monitoring surveillance, not for diagnosis. Hence there is no concern with respect to the testing kits being faulty, that concern was with respect to immune response alone – @ICMRDELHI, on a query on testing kits from China.