For the third day in a row, India on Friday recorded more than 40,000 cases of coronavirus infections, a four per cent increase in the number over the previous day raising concerns of a rise in the trajectory and as a total of 83 cases of Delta plus variant of Covid-19 have been detected in the country till August 4.
These could just be the reported cases with many more unreported one might be doing the rounds in the country, cautioned experts, citing examples of 135 countries where the highly-transmissible Delta variant of Covid-19 are being reported. According to the World Health Organization, the cumulative number of coronavirus cases reported globally could exceed 200 million by next week.
Sources said that the Indian Government may soon allow private labs to do genome testing as it is not able to expedite the process at its own 128 labs under the INSACOG network. Presently, only government approved labs can conduct genome testing.
Overall, India reported 44,643 fresh Covid-19 cases on Friday, which was a four per cent increase in the number of cases from Thursday. The country also reported 464 virus-related deaths during the last 24 hours. Daily test positivity rate - number of positive cases identified per 100 - stands at 2.72 per cent. Recovery rate is at 97.36 per cent.
Kerala, which remains a concern with the most number of Covid cases in a day, reported 22,040 cases. It also reported 117 deaths. The Southern State is likely to witness more than a two-fold increase in the number of Covid-19 cases in the coming days as the R-value in some districts is above 1, the state's health minister, Veena George, warned.
She said in the Assembly on Friday that genome sequencing had found around 90 per cent of the patients in the state were infected with the Delta variant, which has the potential to spread quickly. Andhra Pradesh with 2,145 Covid cases, Tamil Nadu with 1,997, Karnataka with 1,785 are other southern states with high number of daily cases. Telangana reported 582 cases in a day.
The Government informed Lok Sabha on Friday that of 83 Delta virus cases registered, 33 are from Maharashtra, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 11 and Tamil Nadu 10.
Responding to a question on whether private laboratories are permitted to do genome sequencing of coronavirus, Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar in a written reply said inclusion of private labs in Indian INSACOG (SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Consortium) is under consideration.