Maharashtra, Delhi, Bengal, Kerala, TN, K'taka account for nearly 80,000 cases
India on Thursday registered a steep surge in Covid cases which crossed 90,000-mark, a significant rise from the previous day’s 58,097 infections in a span of 24 hours while Omicron tally reached 2,630 — the most in Maharashtra with 797 cases, followed by Delhi with 465 cases.
Several States have announced restrictions like night curfew as Covid cases continue to race across the metros as well as small cities.
Just six States — Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka — accounted for nearly 80,000 cases on Thursday. This means, when India reports its number on Friday, it would easily cross 1.2 lakh.
Maharashtra added 36,265 new cases (Mumbai 21,081) to India’s massive spike, followed by West Bengal and New Delhi. While Bengal registered 14,021 cases, Delhi logged 15,097 new cases in a day.
Gujarat recorded 4,213 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday, taking its tally to 8,44,856, while one patient succumbed to the infection in the State, the Health Department said.
In south, Karnataka reported 5,031 fresh Covid-19 cases, 1 death in the last 24 hours. Kerala recorded 4,649 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday after testing 68,325 samples, taking its Test Positivity Rate (TPR) to 6.80 per cent. Tamil Nadu reported 4,862 Covid-19 cases. Chennai topped the list with 2,481 cases.
Alarmed at the spike, the Centre has asked States to ensure setting up of district, sub-district control rooms for Covid management with adequate staff, doctors, infrastructure, monitoring of beds availability, making outbound calls to patients in home isolation.
The aim is to ensure ease of access to services like ambulance transportation and hospital beds, said an official from the Union Health Ministry.
“All States and UTs must ensure that the daily status report of the home isolated persons are collated by the control rooms at the district and sub-district levels in accordance with the new guidelines,” said the Ministry in a letter dated on January 1, 2022.
In continuation of that letter, the Ministry on Thursday asked the States and UTs to ensure adequate staff and medical doctors at the control rooms in view of a rise in the case. The Ministry has asked the district administration to allot the dedicated ambulances for each control room.
“One of the core responsibilities of the control rooms shall be to collate the daily status report of all patients under home isolation in their jurisdiction and submit the same to the district administration,” reads the letter.
The control rooms will be responsible to make calls to the patients under home isolation for regular monitoring of the status report.
Along with enabling the infrastructure to provide unintended connectivity, the control rooms will remain functional round the clock to provide support to the patients. The control rooms need to ensure a mechanism for the allotment of beds.
Data has shown that the average daily rise of Covid this time is almost 21 per cent faster than during the second wave in March-April. A seven-day moving average showed that the cases have shot up from 56 to 199, said the official.