New Delhi: A Group of Minister (GoM) meeting on COVID 19 on Friday has expressed concern over spillover of COVID cases from high burden areas to new places in India.
The National Centre for Disease Control and (NCDC) director Dr Sujeet K Singh informed the GoM that efforts have been taken on preventing the spillover of cases from the high burden areas to new places by containing local spread, early identification of cases, and strengthening contact tracing among others.
"As for the low burden districts, Singh said, efforts aim at preventing infection among the population from other areas, strengthening ILI and SARI surveillance," said Dr Singh.
The GoM meeting that was presided over by Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has been told that India has crossed more than 1 million recoveries of Covid19 patients at a rate of 64.54 per cent
"This shows that the active cases under medical supervision are only 33.27 percent or approximately 1/3 of the total positive cases. India's case fatality rate is also progressively reducing and currently stands at 2.18 per cent, one of the lowest globally," said Dr Vardhan.
He said that Covid19 doubling rate has also reached up to 21 days.
Dr Vardhan said that out of the total active cases, only 0.28 percent are on ventilators, 1.61 percent patients needed ICU support and 2.32 percent are on oxygen support.
India on Friday recorded 6,42,588 COVID tests in the last 24 hours. A total of more than 1.88 crore tests have been conducted through 1331 labs across India.
The GoM was also appraised of the ramping up of the domestic production capacities of various sectors for manufacturing PPEs, masks, ventilators and drugs such as HCQ.
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The GoM was appraised that Delhi registered the highest recovery rate of 89.08 per cent, followed by Haryana 79.82 per cent. Karnataka has the lowest recovery rate of 39.63 per cent. It was told that 12 states across India including Maharastra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh among others have been registered maximum caseload.
The GoM was informed that efforts are being made to reduce the mortality rate in high caseload districts and cities recent upsurge like Pune, Thane, Bengaluru, Hyderabad etc. The Health Ministry has also initiated serosurvey in those cities for assessing the true burden of cases.
Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Foreign Affairs Minister S Jayashankar, Minister of State for Shipping Manuskh Lal Mandaviya among others were present in the meeting.
Senior officials from different central government departments were also present in the meeting. India's total COVID tally now crosses 16 lakh mark with the highest single-day spike of 55,079 positive cases and 779 deaths in last 24 hours.
Total case now stands at 16,38,871 including 5,45,318 active cases. As many as 10,57,806 people have been cured and 35,747 people have died die to Covid19.
Meanwhile, a study on the geographical and seasonal variation in Covid19 related mortality conducted by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has said that in Mumbai, where the number of cases was highest in India and all deaths were documented, the Covid19 mortality rate was 14 per million population.
"The all-cause mortality in Mumbai was reduced by 20 per cent in March 2020 compared with March 2019 and was also reduced compared with January and February 2020, indicating that the low Covid19 related mortality was true," the ICMR said.
It said that the lower population-level mortality from Covid19 in India could form the basis of reducing the widespread anxiety related to this disease and for undertaking nuanced social distancing measures and personnel protective measures without enforcing strict lockdown.
In another study on transcriptome and viral growth analysis of SARS-CoV-2-infected very CCL -81 cells conducted by ICMR has found that in the initial six hours post-infection, the copy numbers of E and RdRp-2 genes were approximately constant, which raised 10 log-fold and continued to increase till the 12 h post-infection.
"This study was a step towards understanding the growth kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 replication cycle. The findings indicated that ORF8 and ORF7b gene transcripts were expressed in higher amounts indicating their essential role in the viral application," the ICMR said.
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