In the wake of rising coronavirus cases in the country, the Health Ministry on Tuesday said that the situation in India has been becoming "bad to worse over the last few weeks”, adding that it has communicated its concerns to the states about the surge in the number of cases.
"Trends show the virus is still very active and enter our defences, just when we think we can control it, it sparks back," VK Paul, the Chairman of National Expert Committee on Vaccine Administration said at the ministry briefing. He added that the mutated strains of covid have no role to play in this surge. States are told to enforce Covid-appropriate behaviour, including using a mask. "Use the law, use fine as an option people need to wear a mask," he said.
Over 56,000 fresh Covid-19 cases were reported this morning, taking the country's total active caseload to nearly 5.5 lakh.
Highlighting that off the 10 districts have reported a high surge in the COVID-19 cases, 8 districts are from Maharashtra, including Pune, Mumbai, Thane, Nagpur, Nashik, Aurangabad, Bengaluru Urban, Nanded, Delhi and Ahmednagar are amongst the 10 districts reporting the highest number of daily cases.
The weekly national average positivity rate is 5.65%. Maharashtra has a weekly average of 23%, Punjab has a weekly average of 8.82%, Chhattisgarh 8%, Madhya Pradesh 7.82%, Tamil Nadu 2.50%, Karnataka 2.45%, Gujarat 2.2% & Delhi 2.04%: Union Health Secy Rajesh Bhushan
Citing the increase in states, the ministry said, "Punjab is neither doing an adequate number of tests nor is isolating infected people properly. Maharashtra has 3.37 lakh active cases. Death has increased from 32 in Feb to 118 now. Karnataka needs to improve testing and isolation.”
"In Maharashtra, there are 337928 active cases at present. During the second week of February, Maharashtra reported 3,000 daily cases at an average and now the average number of cases has reached 34000. This is the extent of the increase in COVID. The weekly positivity rate is more 23%," the ministry further added.
Giving out details on covid vaccination, the union health secretary said, “From April 1 all people above 45 yrs of age will be eligible for vaccination. Advance appointments can be booked through cowin.gov.in. If you don't want to do this, you can go to your nearest vaccination centre after 3 pm & go for on-site registration.”
“Those who want to go for on-site registration are requested to go to their nearest vaccination centre after 3 pm with any identity document. Usually people with Aadhaar Card & voter ID. But you can also produce a bank passbook, passport, ration card,” Bhushan said.
The ministry also informed that 807 UK variants, 47 South African variants and 1 Brazilian variant have been found in India, adding that the presence of foreign mutant variants of the virus is low.
All private facilities must be utilised optimally for vaccination, Mr Paul said. The facility must have adequate space for waiting, vaccination and observation room. The hospital must have functional cold chain storage, an adequate number of verifiers and vaccinators. They must also have facilities to address adverse events following immunization, he further stressed.
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Speaking about vaccines, the union health minister Harsh Vardhan said that 7 more vaccine candidates are in various clinical trials stages and a further two dozen in pre-clinical trials.
Presently, India is administering its population with two vaccines - AstraZeneca and Oxford University's Covishield and Bharat Biotech's Covaxin.