India's Covid positivity rate went past one per cent again after over two months as the country witnessed a single-day rise of 3,157 infections and 26 fatalities, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Monday.
The Government officials have ruled out a fourth wave in the near future, still they stressed on vaccinating kids.
"People have a casual attitude towards vaccination of children as the first and the second Covid wave did not see many severe infections and deaths in them," said Dr Balram Bhargava, director, Council of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), in Lucknow recently.
In the meantime, the rise reported on Monday pushed the overall Covid tally of the country to 4,30,82,345 cases and 5,23,869 deaths. The number of active cases rose by 408 in a 24-hour span to reach 19,500, the data updated at 8 am showed.
At 1.07 per cent, the daily positivity rate went past one per cent again after a little over two months, the Ministry said. It was at 1.11 per cent on February 27.
The weekly rate was 0.70 per cent, according to the Health Ministry. The death toll has climbed to 5,23,869 with the 26 new fatalities being reported. The active cases constituted 0.05 per cent of the total infections, while the country's Covid-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.74 per cent, the Health Ministry said.
The number of people who have recuperated from the disease rose to 4,25,38,976, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.22 per cent. The cumulative doses administered in the country so far under the nationwide Covid-19 vaccination drive has exceeded 189.23 crore
Dr Bhargava, who was speaking to a newspaper on the sidelines of the event, said, "When we conducted sero surgery of antibodies in children during the third and fourth sero survey undertaken by ICMR, we discovered a high occurrence of infection and high number of antibodies in children too. This means that they were affected by the Covid infection during the two waves and they were perhaps asymptomatic," said the ICMR chief.
India's Covid-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19. India crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crore on June 23.