India has transported a total 2.5 lakh internal migrant workers via 222 special trains to their home towns in the last 5 days, even as 604 Indians have been brought back from foreign countries by air, the ministry of home affairs said at 4 PM today.
The spokesperson also said five more flights will land in India today.
In addition, around 700 people will set sail from Maldives tonight on a two-day journey to Kochi, the MoH spokesperson said.
Out of the 604 people who have been flown in from abroad, 354 arrived in Kerala yesterday night from the Gulf countries, followed by around 250 people from Singapore today, she added.
STEADY RISE IN COVID-19 CASES
Meanwhile, the latest number of newly detected COVID-19 patients in India continued to show a slow, but steady increase.
A total of 3,390 new cases have been reported over the last 24 hours, said Ministry of Health and Famil Welfare spokesperson Luv Agarwal in his daily briefing today.
With this, the total number of COVID-19 patients is close to the 57,000 mark.
Asked if Coronavirus has hit ‘community transmission’ in India and whether India is able to track down the source of infection in all or most cases, the spokesperson said sticking to health guidelines and protocols can help the country beat the infection.
HOTSPOTS
As of yesterday, four states accounted for nearly three quarters of all new cases.
Maharashtra continued the highest number of new cases at 1,216, followed by Tamil Nadu at 580, Delhi at 448 and Gujarat at 388.
However, the condition in other states of concern — Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh — seemed to be coming under control. The first three reported only 100-120 new cases each, while AP reported just 56 new cases yesterday.
Bengal was the only other state with a substantial number of new infections, at 92.
Other previous hotspots, such as Telangana, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir and Karnataka reported 0-20 new cases yesterday. Kerala, which used to lead the tally for more than a month, has reported zero new cases for several days.
Meanwhile, Haryana, which had been reporting single-digit numbers for several days, has seen a slight increase in the number of new cases in the last seven days.
The state has reported around 250 new cases over the past five days. As a result, the total number of active COVID-19 cases in Haryana has tripled in the last week from 113 on May 1 to 359 yesterday (May 7).