The Government on Thursday warned people that it is still not time to lower the guard and it will be prudent to avoid non-essential travel and observe low-key festivities. It pointed out that despite an overall declining trend in India’s weekly positivity rate since last five months, some districts are continuing to report positivity higher than 10 per cent led by Kerala, which has a TPR of more than 15 per cent.
“Increased population density raises chances of Covid spread so it will be prudent to avoid non-essential travel and observe festivity at low key,” Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said at a press conference here on Thursday.
Ahead of the festive season, the Centre has asked State Governments and Union territories to take adequate measures to ensure that a surge in Covid-19 cases is not seen after the celebrations.
The Union Home Ministry has already warned against complacency due to the recent drop in the number of cases. The Health Secretary said 18 districts in India are reporting a weekly positivity between 5 per cent and 10 per cent.
“Active cases are going down across the country, cumulative recovery rate rising. The country has a recovery rate of almost 98%,” Bhushan said.
India also reported 23,529 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, an increase of 24 per cent from Wednesday when the country had recorded less than 20,000 cases. At least 311 deaths due to the coronavirus were also reported in the last 24 hours. The country had been reporting less than 20,000 cases for the last two days since Monday, which has resulted in a drop of active cases in the country to 2.82 lakh.
The total number of coronavirus cases rose to 3,37,39,980 with the new infections, while the death count has reached 4,48,062. The active cases comprise 0.82 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020 — the active caseload at present is 2,77,020.
The number of Covid-19 tests has not reduced as 15-16 lakh tests are being done every day, added the Union Health Secretary.