Even as concerns are being raised over impending third Covid wave, the second one continues to cast shadow over at least seventy-one districts of the country which are reporting Covid case positivity rate of more than 10 per cent for the last few weeks.
In fact, Agartala reported a test positivity rate as high as 21 per cent, among the highest in the country and one indicative of community transmission as per the World Health Organisation.
This has prompted the Government to warn the public not to lower guard and focus on vaccination and follow Covid-19 protocols to control the situation.
Most of these districts are in six States — Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Manipur — which are reporting high infection. Alarmed at the rise in cases, the Centre has rushed high-level teams to these States for Covid-19 control and containment steps.
Kerala reported 12,868 new cases of Covid-19 when 1,24,886 samples were tested in the past 24 hours. The test positivity rate (TPR) in the State went up again, touching 10.3 per cent on the day. The State’s active casepool continued to remain stagnant at around 1 lakh cases and showed no signs of a dip, as a steady number of new cases continued to be reported daily.
Similarly, two days after it reported the highest ever Covid cases in a day, Tripura broke that record with 691 new coronavirus cases on Friday.
Though the BJP-ruled State has an overall positivity rate of 0.67 per cent, the figure stands at 21 per cent in its Capital Agartala - among the highest in the country and one indicative of community transmission, as per the World Health Organisation.
Similarly, Odisha reported 3,222 new Covid-19 cases and added 46 more deaths in the last 24 hours taking the tally to 9,16,109 and death toll 4,109, while Manipur continues to return daily positivity rate in the double digit with 11.4 per cent with 508 returning positive results out of 4460 samples tested in the last 24 hours.
The Ministry said that the Central team will interact with the local authorities and get a first-hand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove bottlenecks, if any.
Dr L Swasticharan, Add DDG & Director EMR, will lead the team to Manipur, Dr Sanjay Sadhukhan, Professor AIIH&PH (Arunachal Pradesh); Dr RN Sinha Dir Professor, AIIH&PH (Tripura); Dr Ruchi Jain, Public Health Specialist (Kerala); Dr A Dan, Public Health Specialist (Odisha); and Dr Dibakar Sahu, Assistant Professor, AIIMS-Raipur (Chhattisgarh).
“The teams will be supporting local authorities in their efforts for targeted COVID response and management, and effectively tackling the pandemic,” said the Ministry adding that they will also suggest remedial actions.
Over all India has witnessed a single-day rise of 46,617 new coronavirus infections, taking the tally of Covid-19 cases to 3,04,58,251, while the national recovery rate has crossed 97 per cent, according to the Ministry data updated on Friday. The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 4,00,312 with 853 daily fatalities.