Express News Service
NEW DELHI: The Union government on Thursday said that India is now seeing a stabilisation of the second wave of Covid pandemic as the active Covid cases and test positivity rate have maintained a declining trend after peaking in early May.
The active coronavirus cases, which had reached over 40 lakh-mark in the first week of this month, have seen a steep decline of 13 lakh over the last 17 days while the 7-day moving average TPR has now come down under 10% after crossing 21%.
“It is reassuring that we are on the downswing of the second wave, and it will be sustained if restrictions open up systematically as the time comes,” said VK Paul, member (health), Niti Aayog who also heads the national Covid task force.
The figures presented by the Union health ministry in a press briefing on Thursday showed that there is a steady decline in daily Covid cases since May 7, when India saw 414,188 people testing positive for the viral disease- the highest single day spike since the beginning of the pandemic last year.
In the last 24 hours, the country recorded 2,11,298 new Covid cases of which Tamil Nadu was the top contributor with 33,764 cases, while Kerala reported 28,798 fresh cases.
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Active cases decline to 24.19 lakh marking a reduction of over 75,000 on Wednesday. However, the country also recorded 3,847 deaths due to the infectious disease of which 1,013 deaths were reported from Maharashtra alone while Karnataka saw 530 deaths and Tamil Nadu 475. The official Covid death tally in India has now crossed 3.15 lakh mark.
The recovery rate in India on May 3 was at 81.8% which went up to 85.6% on May 18 and at present, this rate is at 90%.
“This is a positive indication,” said Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry while urging that infected patients under home isolation and admitted in hospitals should be continuously monitored.
In another good sign, after a continued slump in daily Covid vaccinations, vaccination figures too have improved and till 7 pm on Thursday, a total of 26,58,218 vaccine doses were administered of which 24,81,196 beneficiaries were vaccinated for 1st dose and 1,77,022 beneficiaries received 2nd dose of vaccine as per the provisional reports.
The cumulative vaccination coverage in India is now more than 20.54 crore, even though less than 4.5 % of the adult population in the country has completed two dose regimens of the vaccine yet.
Since the Covid vaccination drive was opened for the 18-44 year age group, 1,51,52,040 across 37 states in this category have received vaccines.
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