India reports 918 new covid cases in a day
1 min read 20 Mar 2023, 01:46 PM ISTLast week, the union health ministry directed the state/UT government to follow a risk assessment-based approach to prevent and contain the infection.
PremiumIndia reported 918 new covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours with daily positivity rate at 2.08%, the union health ministry said on Monday. With more than 44.8 million cases, the country has recorded more than 530,806 deaths so far.
The trajectory of covid cases has increased gradually across the country with Karnataka reporting 616 active cases while Kerala has 1796 active cases. Maharashtra has 1308 active cases, Gujarat with 740 cases, Delhi has recorded 208 cases, Tamil Nadu has 363 active cases; Telangana with 237 cases so far.
While active cases in India have climbed to 6350, the positivity rate is at 0.01%. Around 4,41,59,182 people have recovered from the infection with current recovery rate touching to 98.8%. In addition to this, the daily positivity rate is 2.08% and weekly positivity is 0.86%.
Last week, 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.
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 hospitlaistaion 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.
The country has conducted over 44,225 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours taking the total trajectory of covid testing to 92.03 crore so far.
Under the covid vaccination drive, more than 220.65 crore vaccine doses have been administered to the people across the country so far. In the last 24 hours, around 1,246 vaccine doses were administered.
