PremiumThe Union health ministry on Saturday reviewed the Covid-19 situation in the country, saying that the containment measures have brought down India's overall virus positivity rate to 19.8% from 21.9% last week.
In a routine press briefing, Lav Aggarwal, Union Health Ministry, said that Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Daman and Diu, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh have reported a major drop in case positivity.
The ministry also said that 11 states have over 1 lakh active cases, 8 states have 50,000 to 1 lakh active cases, and 17 have less than 50,000 cases.
Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh where a high number of cases are being reported, are also reporting a decline in active cases, Aggarwal, added.
However, he also said that Tamil Nadu's Covid-19 surge is a "cause of concern" where a rise in number of active cases has been reported in last one week.
The briefing comes hours later Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday chaired a high-level meeting on the COVID-19 situation and the ongoing vaccination drive.
During the meeting, officials briefed PM about the vaccination process and the state-wise coverage of 45+ population. The roadmap for future vaccine availability was also discussed. He directed officials to work closely with states to ramp up the speed of vaccination.
The Prime Minister serious note of some reports about ventilators lying unutilized in storage in some states and directed that immediate audit of installation and operation of ventilators provided by the Centre should be carried out, as per the Prime Minister's Office.
The prime minister also stressed the fact that localised containment strategies are need of the hour, especially for states where test positivity rate in districts is high. PM instructed that testing needs to be scaled up, with use of RT-PCR and Rapid Tests, especially in areas with high test positivity rates.
Meanwhile, India recorded 3,26,098 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours that took the tally to 2,43,72,907, while 3,890 new fatalities pushed the death toll to 2,66,207, according to Union health ministry data updated on Saturday.
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