India reports over 5000 new covid cases

New Delhi: India has recorded 5357 new reported covid cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of active cases to 32,814, the union health ministry on Sunday. With 44.9 million cases so far, the country has reported 530,965 covid related deaths.

The daily positivity rate has reached 3.39% as the increase in the pace of testing is reflected in the uptick in covid cases.

According to epidemiologists, the increasing number of covid cases is not doubling every 4-5 days. This has now led to the reporting of over 5000 covid cases each day.

The trajectory of covid cases has increased gradually across the country with Karnataka reporting 1745 active cases while Kerala has 11,574 active cases. Maharashtra has 4360 active cases, Gujarat with 2155 cases, Delhi has recorded 2232 cases, Tamil Nadu has 1703 active cases; Himachal Pradesh with 1807 cases so far.

With uptick in the trend of covid cases, scientists said that XBB.1.16 is the covid-19 variant responsible for present surge in covid cases. However, scientists say that people in India have developed hybrid immunity (due to vaccination and natural infection), therefore, the present covid-19 variants will not be able cause hospitalization and severity as it is mild in nature. However, government has suggested people to wear masks in crowded places and complete their vaccination doses if not done yet.

Around 4,41,92,837 people recovered from the infection with the current recovery rate touching 98.76%.

Meanwhile, the union health ministry directed the state/UT government to follow a risk assessment-based approach to prevent and contain the infection. The health ministry advised to the state governments to examine the situation of covid-19 at micro level (district &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 1,57,894 conducted in the last 24 hours taking the total trajectory of covid testing to 92.27 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 659 vaccine doses were administered.