Even as economic and social activities return to a normal state after the recent upsurge in Covid cases in January-February, daily new cases have shown a marginal-but-steady rise in recent weeks with test positivity rate in States heading north again.

Data from the State health bulletins show that big States, inclulding Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, Delhi and West Bengal, have shown a steady rise in the daily test positivity rate with daily new cases going up steadily.

The nation's average daily test positivity rate was reported at 0.2 per cent on March 30, 2022, with 1,233 positive cases from the 6.24 lakh tests conducted in 24 hours. The TPR has steadily increased to 0.74 per cent on April 30 and 0.97 per cent on May 29. Notably, the number of daily tests dropped by more than half from 6.24 lakh to about 2.78 lakh tests conducted on May 29.

Experts note that the absolute number of daily new cases may appear lower when compared with earlier month data, but the test positivity rate shows the infection is still present and is slowly spreading, too.

Speaking to BusinessLine, Tushar Patel, a member of the Gujarat government’s Covid task force, informed that the rise in test positivity rate is primarily linked to increased international travel. “We see more people travelling from abroad. And, already we see countries in Europe, Canada, US and many others still having increase in daily new cases. And, at the same time, travelling has also increased. What we have observed is that most of these new cases have travel history,” he said.

However, he ruled out any alarming situation arising anytime soon. “The dominant variant at present is mostly Omicron. Also, there are not known mutations of this. So, at present that is not a matter of concern,” he said.

Gujarat, along with highly populated Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu, has reported a steady rise in the daily test positivity. In Gujarat, the daily TPR increased from near zero to 0.2 per cent between March 30 and May 29, but the daily tests reduced from about 25,600 to 16,202.

The reduction in daily testing has been reported across States. Maharashtra, for example, reported 119 new cases on March 30 from a total 39,562 tests, leading to a TPR of 0.3 per cent. But the TPR shot up to 2.23 per cent on May 29, as the State recorded 550 new cases from lesser tests, 24,707.

Doctors, however, aren't yet raising the alarm following widespread vaccination and developed immunity against the Omicron variant.

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