Alarmed that upcoming string of festivals might not turn into Covid super spreader events, the Union Health Ministry on Wednesday advised States to impose adequate local curbs to check spread of infection.
The advice comes in the backdrop of rising cases on Wednesday after usual week-end lull.
India’s coronavirus cases have again crossed the 40,000-mark with 42,625 fresh infections in the last 24 hours and deaths shooting past the 500-mark in a single day in the last 24 hours.
For the past seven days except on Monday, India has been reporting more than 40,000 cases every day, a cause of concern for the Government fearing third Covid wave anytime soon.
However, more worrying is the fact that the number of people getting cured of the viral infection was lower than the number of new cases, as indicated by the Wednesday data available from the Union Health Ministry.
Another key Covid number – the active cases – also saw a spike of more than 5,000 cases. The morning update provided by the Union Health Ministry stated that, at present, India has 4,10,353 active cases. The government data said India witnessed 36,668 recoveries in the last 24 hours.
A look at the cumulative numbers showed that Kerala witnessed the sharpest surge in the last couple of weeks. There was a nearly 30 per cent increase in weekly numbers even as almost 50 per cent of the country’s total daily new Covid cases are registered in the Southern State.
In other Southern states such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, Covid numbers have seen a slight uptick. However, India’s recovery rate currently stands at 97.37 per cent. The weekly positivity rate remains below 5 per cent and is currently at 2.36 per cent. The daily positivity rate continues to remain below 5 per cent for 55 continuous days and currently stands at 2.31 per cent
Union Health secretary Rajesh Bhushan .in a letter to the concerned officials from the States pointed out about various festivals like Muharram, Janmashtami, Ganesh Chaturthi and a few others slated ahead and said measures should be ensured to curb crowds and that people strictly follow Covid appropriate norms.
The Health Ministry data says that a total of 62,53,741 vaccine doses were administered in the last 24 hrs. With this, a total of 48,52,86,570 vaccine doses has been administered in India so far.