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Business News/ News / India/  'Ramp up testing': ICMR warns as 46 districts still reporting over 10% Covid positivity rate
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'Ramp up testing': ICMR warns as 46 districts still reporting over 10% Covid positivity rate

Ten states are either reporting a rise in new daily cases or a rise in positivity

Covid-19 testing (HT)Premium
Covid-19 testing (HT)

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Saturday reviewed the Covid situation in ten states including Kerala, which has been reporting high daily infection numbers. Situation was also reviewed in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur.

These states are either reporting a rise in new daily cases or a rise in positivity. Bhushan told all districts reporting positivity rate more than 10% in the last few weeks to consider strict restrictions to prevent/curtail movement of people, formation of crowds and intermingling of people to prevent spread of infection.

"It was forcefully underlined that any laxity at this stage will result in deterioration of the situation in these districts," the Health Ministry said in a statement.

More than 80% active cases in these states are reported to be in home isolation.

There is need to effectively and strictly monitor these cases so that they are not intermingling and circulating in their neighborhoods, community, village, mohalla, ward etc, and spreading the infection.

States also to focus on those districts where the positivity rate is less than 10%, so as to protect these districts and the populations by focusing on saturation of vaccination in these districts.

ICMR DG Dr Balram Bhargava, who was also in the review meeting, warned the states against any complacency with around 40,000 cases being reported daily since the preceding weeks. He said 46 districts were showing more than 10% positivity while another 53 districts were showing a positivity between 5%-10%. Therefore, the states need to ramp up their testing, he said.

"States have been advised to conduct their own state level sero-surveys for district-wise disease prevalence data, as the national level sero-prevalence survey was heterogeneous in nature, in collaboration with ICMR to ensure the same sturdy protocols of survey," he said. Bhargava also advised the states to ramp up vaccination in the 60+ and 45-60 age categories as evidence shows near 80% of the mortality is from these vulnerable age-groups.

He also advised the state authorities for avoiding all non-essential travel and to discourage all large gatherings of crowds.

According to the ministry, the states were advised to undertake intensive containment and active surveillance in clusters reporting higher cases and define containment zones based on mapping of cases and contacts traced.

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Published: 31 Jul 2021, 06:11 PM IST
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