India reports single day rise of 5,335 covid cases

New Delhi: India has recorded 5,335 new covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total active cases to 25,587, the union health ministry said on Thursday. The country’s daily positivity rate has reached 3.32%.

India has reported 44.9 million covid cases and 530,929 deaths so far. According to epidemiologists, covid-19 infections in India are doubling every 4-5 days and this has now led to the reporting of over 5,000 covid cases each day.

Covid cases have been increasing gradually across the country with Karnataka reporting 1,477 active cases, Kerala 8,229 active cases, Maharashtra 3,874 cases, Gujarat 2,220 cases, Delhi recorded 1,795 cases, Tamil Nadu 1,216 active cases, and Himachal Pradesh 1,705 cases.

Scientists have said that the XBB.1.16 variant of coronavirus is responsible for the current surge in cases. But in a relief, the infection is supposed to be milder in nature and may not lead a rise in hospitalisation rate as Indians have likely developed hybrid immunity due to vaccination and natural exposure to the disease. The Centre, however, has urged people to wear masks in crowded places and complete their vaccination doses.

The union health ministry has directed the states and union territories to follow a risk assessment-based approach to prevent and contain the infection. The ministry has advised state governments to examine the covid-19 situation at micro level (district and sub-districts) and maintain focus on implementation of necessary measures for prompt and effective management of covid-19 duly ensuring effective compliance.

“The five-fold strategy, i.e., Test-Track Treat-Vaccination should be followed with continued focus on adequate & proactive testing as per guidelines, monitoring new and emerging clusters of new Covid-19 cases along with monitoring the trend of Influenza-like illness (ILI) & SARI cases in all health facilities or through dedicated fever clinics on a regular basis for detecting early warning signals of the spread of infection,” the health ministry stated as there are few states which are reporting higher number of cases indicating possible localized spread of infection.

The country has conducted over 1,60,742 tests in the last 24 hours taking the total trajectory of covid testing to 92.23 crore so far.

Under the covid vaccination drive, more than 220.66 crore vaccine doses have been administered to the people across the country so far. In the last 24 hours, around 1,993 vaccine doses were administered.