India's COVID-19 situation going from "bad to worse" is cause of worry: Govt

The Centre on Tuesday, March 30, said that the coronavirus situation in India is going from “bad to worse over the last few weeks”. With the surge in daily COVID-19 cases, the situation has become a cause of worry especially for some states, said the government.

V K Paul, chairman of the National Expert Committee on Vaccine Administration said that the trends show the virus is still very active, can penetrate our defences and strike back when we think that we have found ways to control it. He, however, denied that the mutated strains have a role to play in this surge.

Speaking on the coronavirus situation in the country, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that the weekly national average positivity rate is currently 5.65 per cent.

According to reports, Maharashtra has a weekly average of 23 per cent, Punjab has a weekly average of 8.82 per cent, Chhattisgarh 8 per cent, Madhya Pradesh 7.82 per cent, Tamil Nadu 2.50 per cent, Karnataka 2.45 per cent, Gujarat 2.2 per cent and Delhi 2.04 per cent.

Meanwhile, eight of the top 10 COVID-19 high-burden districts of the country are from Maharashtra and that Delhi, taken as one district, is also on the list, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said.

The 10 districts with maximum active COVID cases are Pune (59,475), Mumbai (46,248), Nagpur (45,322), Thane (35,264), Nashik (26,553), Aurangabad (21,282), Bengaluru Urban (16,259), Nanded (15,171), Delhi (8,032) and Ahmednagar (7,952).

Of the 11,064 genome samples sequenced, the UK variant was detected in 807, South African variant in 47 and Brazilian variant found in one, Bhushan further said.

Moreover, the government has asked all states and union territories to adopt a district-centric approach to fight the upward swing in cases. Each district, irrespective of whether it is seeing a surge or is with a low burden, should exponentially increase the number of COVID-19 tests. The proportion of RT-PCR tests need to be increased too.

Besides, Aviation regulator DGCA told airports to increase surveillance and consider imposing spot fines, with the help of police, on passengers not wearing masks properly and violating physical distance rule. The DGCA said that it has come to notice that compliance with protocols is not satisfactory. The possibility of taking punitive action, such as spot fines shall also be explored.