The Government on Wednesday said that currently, the number of Delta Plus variants, also known as B.1.617.2.1 (AY.1), in India are only few but the distribution and detection in various States during the past two months indicate that it is already present in some States. Therefore, these States may need to enhance their public health response by focusing on surveillance, enhanced testing, quick contact-tracing and priority vaccination in defined geographies where AY.1 has been detected, it added.

“The role of AY.1’s role in immune escape, disease severity or increased transmissibility etc. is under continued surveillance,” the statement added.

The Health Ministry on Tuesday had said that the cases of Delta Plus variants have been detected in some districts of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala during the past two months.

No significant increase in prevalence

“As of now among the samples sequenced (45000+) in India, this variant has been observed sporadically in Maharashtra, Kerala & Madhya Pradesh, with around 40 cases identified so far and no significant increase in prevalence,” the Ministry said. As of June 18, 205 sequences of AY.1 lineage were detected worldwide, with the USA and UK having over half the known cases, it added.

Meanwhile, India reported 50,848 fresh cases on Wednesday with 1,358 deaths in the last 24 hours till 8:00 AM. The daily infections were lower than the 50,000-mark in the previous day at 42,640 after a period of three months, while the daily Covid casualties were at 1,167. Cumulatively, the country reported 3,00,28,709 cases of which active cases were 6,43,194, recovered cases were 2,89,94,855 and the death toll was 3,90,660, according to the Health Ministry data.

It is to be noted that active caseload is lowest in 82 days. Meanwhile, 68,817 patients recovered during the last 24 hours and daily recoveries continued to outnumber the daily new cases for the 41st consecutive day. Also, the recovery rate increased to 96.56 per cent.

In addition, the weekly positivity rate remained below 5 per cent at 3.12 per cent and the daily positivity rate stood at 2.67 per cent, less than 5 per cent for 16 straight days. Besides this, the country conducted 19,01,056 tests and the testing capacity substantially ramped up to 39.59 crore.

Meanwhile, the country administered 29,46,39,511 vaccine doses in a single day with 54,24,374 doses in the last 24 hours till 8:00 am.

Furthermore, with the implementation of revised vaccination policy on June 21 when India witnessed record rise vaccination numbers, RS Sharma, the Chief Executive Officer of National Health Authority (NHA) tweeted Wednesday, “1,08,949 vaccinators logged into Co-WIN on June 21st to facilitate the inoculation of 8.6mn #Indians in 1 day. This is equivalent to Switzerland's population and more than that of any of the Nordic countries.”

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