As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis exacerbates in India, the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus climbed to 13,387 on Friday with the death toll reaching 437.

At 8:30 AM in the morning, the 13,387 total coronavirus-positive cases in India included 11,201 active cases, 1,749 cured, discharged, or migrated patients and 437 deaths. In the last 24 hours, 1,007 new cases and 23 deaths were reported.

However, a silver lining in these statistics is that the rate of recovery is increasing in India. In the last 24 hours, 260 have recovered, which is the highest in India so far.

A day earlier, the Health Ministry has informed that 325 districts in India have no cases of COVID19. It also said that an action plan has been prepared to strengthen ongoing surveillance for COVID-19 clusters.

"An action plan has been prepared on strengthening our ongoing surveillance utilizing the services of World Health Organisation’s national polio surveillance network Lav Agrawal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health stated.

The Indian Council of Medical Research informed that 2,90,401 people have been tested to date, out of which 30,043 (26,331 tests done at ICMR's 176 labs & 3,712 tests at 78 private labs) were tested yesterday.

The organisation had also informed that the rapid antibody test is not conducted for early diagnosis, it is used for surveillance purposes.

"In Japan, to find one positive case, 11.7 persons are tested. In Italy that number is 6.7, in the US it's 5.3, in the UK it's 3.4. Here in India, we do 24 tests for one positive case,"  R Gangakhedkar, Head of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) stated.

Coronavirus in India LIVE updates from Friday, 17 April 2020

21:57 IST Friday, 17 April 2020

Delhi update:

67 new cases, total 1707

4 deaths on Friday, death toll 42

72 total cured, active cases 1592

21 discharged today 

20:53 IST Friday, 17 April 2020

Tamil Nadu update:

56 new cases today. This is a considerable spike in cases given that last 3 days figures were 31, 38 and 25.

Total positive cases - 1323

Discharged - 283, including 103 discharged today

Cases in Chennai - 228

20:51 IST Friday, 17 April 2020

Karnataka update

44 new cases from 5 pm, April 16 to 5 pm April 17

359 total COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed in the state, it includes 13 Deaths & 88 Discharges

18:37 IST Friday, 17 April 2020

Gujarat update:

1035 cases, 39 deaths; 74 cured

106 new cases on Friday

25 of the 33 districts affected

17:45 IST Friday, 17 April 2020

COVID-19 cases in India jump to 13,835; death toll 452

In an attempt to contain misinformation on the coronavirus pandemic, social networking giant Facebook on Thursday stressed that it will soon start showing messages in News Feed to the people who have previously engaged with misinformation that has already been removed from the platform. They will also be shown the correct information, the company said.

In a Facebook post, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the new feature, called Get The Facts, will debunk misinformation about the COVID-19 crisis. This will be part of a section of the company's COVID-19 Information Centre featuring articles written by independent fact-checking partners.

"We're also launching a new feature called Get The Facts, a section of our COVID-19 Information Center featuring articles written by independent fact-checking partners debunking misinformation about the coronavirus. We will also soon begin showing messages in News Feed to people who previously engaged with harmful misinformation related to COVID-19 that we’ve since removed, connecting them with accurate information," the CEO wrote.

He further added that over 2 billion people on Facebook and the company's image sharing platform Instagram have been redirected to authoritative health resources.

"On Facebook and Instagram, we've now directed more than 2 billion people to authoritative health resources via our COVID-19 Information Center and educational pop-ups, with more than 350 million people clicking through to learn more. We're also continuing our efforts to reduce misinformation. Since the beginning of March, we've expanded our fact-checking coverage to more than a dozen new countries and now work with over 60 fact-checking organizations that review content in more than 50 languages," the post added.

Zuckerberg also explained a piece of content will be taken down from the platform if it contains misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm. "We've taken down hundreds of thousands of pieces of misinformation related to COVID-19, including theories like drinking bleach cures the virus or that physical distancing is ineffective at preventing the disease from spreading."

"For other misinformation, once it is rated false by fact-checkers, we reduce its distribution, apply warning labels with more context and find duplicates. In March, we displayed warnings on about 40 million posts related to Covid-19 based on 4,000 articles reviewed by independent fact-checkers. When people saw those warning labels, 95% of the time they did not go on to view the original content," he further added.

In India, the Press Information Bureau has been fact-checking social media posts that are spreading fake news and debunking them through different channels. It has also urged people not to believe such messages and only trust the offiial information provided by the govenrment.