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On a day marking the first anniversary of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring Covid-19 as pandemic, India witnessed a significant surge in cases on Wednesday, taking the number of active case load in the country beyond 2.5 lakh.
At 35,871, new cases reported on Wednesday was the highest since December 3. And, nearly two out of three fresh cases — 23,179 — were reported from Maharashtra alone. Kerala with 2,093 cases and Punjab with 2,013 are the other States reporting high numbers. Karnataka (1,275) and Gujarat (1,122) are two other States where the daily cases have crossed the four-figure mark in the last 24 hours.
According to the Health Ministry, out of 10 districts that have the highest number of active cases, nine are from Maharashtra and one from Karnataka. Pune with 32,359 active cases and Nagpur with 21,496 topped the list. Mumbai, Thane, Nashik, Aurangabad, Bengaluru Urban, Jalgoan, Nanded and Amaravati are other districts with high active case loads. A Ministry statement put the total confirmed cases in the country close to 1.15-crore mark with recoveries exceeding 1.10 crore.
As many as 1,59,216 people, including 172 during on Wednesday, succumbed to their infection so far. About 85 per cent of deaths on Wednesday came from just five States, with Maharashtra accounting for half of the mortality.
Delhi CM’s request
Yet, the vaccination drive has been progressing slowly. So far a total of 3.71 crore vaccine shots have been administered across the country since the drive was launched on January 16. The “tardy” progress prompted Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to request the Centre on Thursday to relax some of the stringent conditions around vaccination so that the capital can take up inoculation on a war footing.
“Given that production of vaccines in the country has come up to a good level, my appeal to the Centre is that instead of fixing criteria for those eligible based on age, etc., we should instead prepare a negative list of those who are not eligible and allow the rest to be vaccinated and even through walk-in at the centres. If walk in’s were to be allowed by the Centre and enough vaccine is available, we can vaccinate entire Delhi in three months,” Kejriwal said at a press briefing.
He was confident that Delhi can ramp up its daily vaccinations from the current levels of 30,000-40,000 to 1.25 lakh in the next few days.
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