New Delhi: India’s top active caseload states like Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have been witnessing a major decline in active cases and positivity rate in the last three weeks.
“Stringent local containment measures have yielded results in these highly active caseload states since the last three weeks,” said Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the Union Health Ministry in New Delhi on Thursday.
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Data shows that from 3,46,168 cases between May 7-13 the number of active cases has come down to 2,40,827 between May 14-20. Similarly, the positivity rate in Maharashtra has also come down to 14.1 per cent from 21 per cent during the same period.
Uttar Pradesh has also witnessed a decline from 1,63,941 active cases to 81,614 during the same period with the positivity rate coming down to 4.8 per cent from 11.9 per cent.
Delhi which has been witnessing a spike in active cases as well as positivity also registered a sharp decrease. From 1,08,084 (May 7-13) the number of active cases has come down to 44,733 and similarly the rate of positivity has also come down to 10.2 per cent from 21.9 per cent.
He, however, said that states registering more than 5 per cent positivity is a cause of concern.
Agarwal said that seven states including Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland, Sikkim, Mizoram are still causing concern because of their increasing caseload and positivity rate.
He said that overall daily new cases and daily new deaths have also been witnessing a downward trend.
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The Health Ministry official also expressed serious concern following findings that half of India’s population is not wearing masks.
“50 per cent of our population do not wear masks. Of the 50 per cent who wears a mask, 64 per cent cover the mouth but not the nose, 20 per cent have it on the chin, 2 per cent have a mask on the neck and only 14 per cent wear masks correctly, covering the nose, mouth, chin and with a clip on the nose,” said Agarwal referring to an independent survey.
Asserting that this kind of behaviour may invite more infection for the community, Agarwal said that proper social distancing is also necessary to fight the infection.
“With no physical distance one infected person can infect 406 people in 30 days whereas an infected person while reducing physical exposure by 75 per cent can infect 2.5 people in 30 days,” said Agarwal while addressing a press conference on the management and action on Covid-19.
Meanwhile, admitting that India has been witnessing a massive upsurge in Covid-19 cases, Dr Balram Bhargav, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said that by June 30 India is expecting to have 45 lakh tests in a day including RTPCR 18 lakh and RAT 27 lakhs.
“On May 19 we conducted 20,60,701 tests whereas we are expecting to increase the test capacity to 25 lakhs by May 31,” said Dr Bhargava adding, “Even as we are doing an increased number of testing, the positivity rate is also decreasing.”
He said that all the state and UTs have been asked to increase both RAT and RT PCR tests. He said that till date ICMR has validated 105 RAT and approved 41 out of which 31 are indigenous.
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As the second wave of the pandemic has affected largely the tier 2 and tier 3 cities, Dr Bhargava said that all the state and union territory administrations have been asked to increase RAT testing as it gives results very quickly.
Dr Bhargava further informed that people can start doing home testing from next week as the home testing kits will be available in the market very soon
It may be mentioned here that ICMR has given approval for producing home testing kits to Pune based Mylab Discovery Solutions Limited. “Application of three more companies is in the pipelines,” said Dr Bhargava.
Referring to DRDO’s 2-DG (2-deoxyglucose) ) medicine for Covid patients, Dr Bhargava said that it was a reused medicine. “DRDO has submitted its study to the DCGI before getting the approval for its application on the patients. We will examine the study before including it in the clinical management protocol for Covid management,” informed DR Bhargava.
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