By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Raising an alarm over the rising number of districts with Covid-19 test positivity rate of over 10% and over 20 districts reporting an increasing trend in daily cases, the Centre on Tuesday said it is an “area of concern.”
Compared to 46 such districts in India between July 14-21, this week, the number has grown to 54 and the majority of them are in Kerala, Maharashtra and the five north-eastern states.
More worryingly, there are 22 districts in the country which have recorded an increase in the trends of the Covid-19 cases for the last four weeks.
While addressing a press briefing on the coronavirus pandemic status in the country, Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the Union health ministry, said that 22 districts — including 7 from Kerala, 2 from Maharashtra, 5 from Manipur and three in Meghalaya — are showing a rising trend in cases over a month.
#TNIEKeralaCovidUpdate#Kerala TPR jumps to 12.35% on Tuesday from 10.59%. New cases continue to rise. More details here pic.twitter.com/fK4lNsBsOm
— TNIE Kerala (@xpresskerala) July 27, 2021
As per the data shared, there are still 62 districts in the country where over 100 cases are reported every day, which are found in a localised and limited set of areas of these districts.
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“Average daily new cases declined from 3,87,029 cases between May 5- 11 to 38,090 cases between July 21-27. The recovery rate in the country now stands at 97.4 %,” said Agarwal.
India on Monday reported less than 30,000 fresh cases, the lowest in 132 days.
“If we look from a global perspective, the pandemic is far from over. There is a noticeable increase in the number of cases across the world, which remains the area of concern. We have to work on containing the spread of the virus with strictness,” Agarwal added.
On a positive note, VK Paul, member, health, Niti Aayog, who also heads the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration Committee for Covid-19, mentioned a study conducted on 15 lakh doctors and frontline workers in the Armed Forces Medical College who were administered Covishield.
The findings have shown that there was a 93% reduction in infection during the massive second wave of the pandemic, driven by the delta variant of SARS CoV-2 while the vaccine also showed a 98% reduction in mortality.
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