New Delhi: As India witnessed a sudden rise in COVID cases first time in more than six weeks, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) Dr Harsh Vardhan on Friday expressed serious concern over the spike.
Reviewing the COVID situation in the country with senior officials of the ministry, Harsh Vardhan asked to mandate testing of all persons who test negative in rapid antigen tests and develop symptoms of influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory illness (SARI).
Earlier too, the Health Ministry had suggested for Real-time RT–PCR tests for those who tested negative in rapid antigen test but develop ILI and SARI symptoms.
Presently, Maharastra, Kerala, Delhi and West Bengal account for more than 50 per cent of active COVID cases in India.
According to the Health Ministry statistics, Maharastra registered 21.53 per cent of COVID cases, Kerala 16.12 per cent, Delhi 7.08 per cent and West Bengal 6.87 per cent.
Also read: Global COVID-19 tracker
On the other hand, 54,157 COVID patients have recovered in the last 24 hours taking the total number to 7765966.
The statistics indicate there is a continuous decline in average daily new cases for the last 6 weeks. From registering more than 73,000 average daily new cases in the first week of October, the average daily new cases have declined to 46,000 cases.
Total active cases in India at present is 6.19 per cent.
The country registered 670 fatalities in the last 24 hours out of which nearly 86 per cent registered from 10 states including Maharastra, Delhi, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and others.
