According to the update on Wednesday morning, the Indian Health Ministry reported 2,003 more deaths and 10,974 new cases over the past 24 hours.
The total number of COVID-19 cases has now reached to 354,065, with the death toll hitting 11,903.
The western state of Maharashtra is the worst-affected currently with the highest number of deaths — 5,537.
Although 1,328 of the fatalities in the state occurred in March and April, they were reported on Wednesday after clearance from the state’s death audit committee tasked with taking the final call on the cause of deaths.
By June 16, the country has conducted 6,084,256 tests, according to the Indian Medical Research Council.
Malaysia’s response a good lesson for the West, International report
DNDi’s South-East Asia office director Jean-Michel Piedagnel said this illustrated the value of a middle-income country’s expertise in a global pandemic response.
Compiled by Dr Fifa Rahman and non-profit organisation the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), the report, posted by Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah on his official website, said compared to the situation in the West, countries in the East such as Malaysia showed innovative and speedy pandemic responses that kept infections and deaths relatively low.
“While there is a clear need to invest in more expensive solutions such as new treatments and vaccines, pragmatism and speed in terms of instituting a basic health response is a major factor,” he said.
“This is a lesson we all need to remember, ” he said in the report titled The Malaysian Response to Covid-19: Building Preparedness for ‘Surge Capacity’, Testing Efficiency, and Containment.
The report also said Malaysia hospitalised all individuals diagnosed as Covid-19 positive, whether symptomatic and asymptomatic.
“Learning from other countries, including China, was essential in identifying the dos and don’ts in the Covid-19 response, including in terms of treatment,” said the report.
“Planning and preparedness activities began relatively early in Malaysia, with initial planning starting in December, diagnostic reagents procurement in January, and a number of renovations to hospital facilities done in February,” said the report.
Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said Malaysia’s prompt response to the Covid-19 pandemic was partly due to its experience in containing past infections.
“These outbreaks had made Malaysia more prepared to deal with such situations, including having more thermal scanners that had been placed at all entry points into the country, as well as its actions in isolating Covid-19 cases and placement of suspected cases under quarantine, ” he said.
Malaysia drastically upgraded health facilities and diagnostics capacity in February, including an 86% increment in diagnostics laboratory capacity, 89% increment in critical care bed capacity, and an 49% increase in the number of available ventilators (from 526 to 1,034 units), he said.
The authorities also mobilised 10 university laboratories, as well as an additional ones at the Malaysian Genome Institute, so that diagnostics capacity increased from an initial six laboratories to 43 laboratories at time of writing.
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