States start placing travel restrictions as cases remain above 40K
Amid resurgence in Covid infections in India with the daily case count remaining over 40,000 for the fifth straight day on Sunday, various States have started restricting inter-city and inter-State travel besides imposing clampdown on markets and limiting people’s gathering.
This containment strategy comes weeks after easing travel movements and opening up of shops and shopping malls besides public transports.
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have already taken tough measures for passengers coming from Kerala which is reporting a sharp uptick in cases. India reported 41,831 new Covid-19 cases.
Kerala which too is battling increasing Covid cases has cautioned people against negligence towards following Covid norms and of stricter steps if the number of infections increases. Health Minister K Sudhakar said marshals would be deployed to monitor weddings. The Government had mandated RT-PCR certificates not older than 72 hours for those arriving in Kerala from neighbouring States.
The Union Health Ministry on Saturday directed 10 severely Covid-19 affected States to ensure that all districts reporting a positivity rate above 10 per cent must ensure strict restrictions on public gatherings. According to the ICMR, 80 per cent of the cases in most of the States were in home isolation. With an increasing number of Covid-19 positive cases in Coimbatore district, the authorities have announced that a new set of restrictions to control the spread of the disease will come into force on August 2. Similarly, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai stated that he will take a call on imposing nightlife curbs, weekend curfews after watching how the situation unfolds in 15 days in the State on Saturday after chairing the meeting in connection with emerging Covid situation in the bordering districts of the State.
The situation in other countries like Japan and the US is also turning alarming. The World Health Organisation has announced an 80 per cent average increase over the past four weeks in five of the health agency’s six regions, a jump largely fuelled by the Delta variant.
According to experts, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19, might have already developed into extra threatening kinds which have, to date, evaded detection since they have not infected sufficient people, the Financial Times reported.
“We’ve been surprised more than once by the evolution of variants, though maybe we shouldn’t have been because the virus only recently moved into humans and is still adapting to its new hosts,” Nick Loman, Professor of microbial genomics at Birmingham University in the UK, said, it reported.
Meanwhile, Health Ministry data showed that a total of 60,15,842 Covid vaccine doses were administered in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 47,02,98,596 so far. In a tweet, the Health Ministry said India has achieved the landmark vaccination drive against the Covid pandemic, successfully having administered the vaccine to over 47 crore people across the nation.
In a tweet, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said while taking a swipe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for questioning the Government’s vaccine delivery programme, “More than 13 crore doses were administered in India in the month of July. It is going to accelerate this month. We are proud of our healthcare workers for this achievement.”