Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday held a high-level meeting to review Covid-19 related situations including the ongoing vaccination drive in the country as India reported a surge in cases. All senior officers including Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, Principal Secretary to PM P.K. Mishra, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, and Vinod Paul, NITI Aayog member and chairman of government's empowered group on Covid management are participating in the meeting.
India recorded 93,249 new cases in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day spike since September 2020, taking the total tally to 1,24,85,509, the union health ministry said.
The country has been recording an unabated spike in cases for over three weeks. Daily cases in the country peaked on September 16, 2020, with 97,894 people testing positive for the virus in a single day.
The Centre has suggested high-burden states and union territories take stringent measures for containment of the surge, as the use of masks and social distancing. The growing laxity in implementing the safety measures is the reason for the current spike, it maintains, though scientists have pointed to the proliferation of mutant strains. Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Chandigarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Haryana are the states of grave concern.
Dr Randeep Guleria -- the chief of Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences and a top member of the government's Covid Task Force -- said it is time to place a bigger range of measures, including containment zones, lockdown areas, ramping up testing, tracing and isolation. Earlier, he said that mutant strains are partly responsible for the Covid spike. Now he said there is a need to have more genome sequencing and the data should be compared to epidemiological data from the ground to identify particular areas where the surge is happening.
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The active cases have now increased to 6,91,597 comprising 5.54 per cent of the total infections, while a total of 1,16,29,289 patients have recovered in the last 24 hours with the recovery rate reported to 93.14 per cent, according to the Union Health Ministry reports. The active caseload was the lowest at 1,35,926 on February 12 and comprised 1.25 per cent of the total infections. Meanwhile, the death toll increased to 1,64,623 on Sunday with 513 new fatalities and the fatality rate was reported 1.32 per cent. So far, 7,59,79,651 doses of the corona vaccine have been administered in the country since the drive began on January 16 after approval for Covishield and Covaxin.
On April 1, the third phase of the vaccination drive began under which anyone 45 or older is allowed to get a shot.