Bhopal, Apr 24 (IANS): On the ninth day of the second phase of lockdown Madhya Pradesh recorded 100 fresh cases with Bhopal, Indore and three other western districts accounting for 90 of them on Thursday.
The figure of fresh cases jumped from Wednesday's 1587 to 1687 on Thursday. Bhopal's corona positive cases include one eight-month-old child.
With a new minister Narottam Mishra taking charge as health and home minister the strategy seemed to slow down the monitoring process. On Thursday only one bulletin was issued that covered information till 3 p.m. while the evening bulletin was skipped.
Survey teams have not visited the rural areas in most parts of the state. Indore (22), Bhopal (20), Ujjain (35), Khargone (10), Khandwa (3) recorded 90 of the 100 cases and Jabalpur (4), Sagar (3), Dewas (1), Gwalior (1) and one case of a person from Maharashtra was found in Burhanpur made up the rest of new cases.
Testing also slowed down after the ICMR stopped use of Chinese testing kits since Wednesday. Of the 33074 samples reports for more than 8500 are pending with the labs in the state.
Almost 7.50 crore people in the state are stuck at home due to corona spread. Health department says 31,078 people were sampled in about 40 days which is just 0.041 per cent of the total population.
Nearly 80 per cent of the samples tested so far are from Bhopal and Indore. In other areas, the testing process is very slow. Of the 14 labs in the state 12 belong to the government and two are private labs.
Of the 51 districts 24 are in the Green Zone with no infected patient reported. However, sources in the health department say people have not being tested due to lack of health facilities in most parts of these districts at all.
So far, 203 people have recovered: 82 from Indore, 73 from Bhopal, seven from Khargone, five from Ujjain, eight from Khandwa, six from Jabalpur, 14 from Morena, two each from Gwalior and Shivpuri, Vidisha, Shajapur, Raisen, Hoshangabad. Four deaths were reported on Thursday taking the total death toll to 84.