In view of the resurgence in Covid cases in South-East Asia and some countries in Europe, the Health Ministry, on Friday, advised State/UTs to focus on aggressive and sustained genome sequencing and intensified surveillance. It instructed the State/UTs to keep an overall vigil on the Covid situation in the country.
Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, in a letter on March 18, urged all State/UTs to ensure that “adequate number of samples are submitted to INSACOG network through sentinel sites..for timely detection of new variants while maintaining adequate testing as per the ICMR protocols”.
Meanwhile, he also asked the State/UTs for speedier vaccination coverage of the eligible population. “The State machinery should create required awareness and ensure adherence to Covid appropriate behavior, i.e, wearing face masks, maintaining physical distancing in all public gatherings and practice of effective hand and respiratory hygiene,” he further added.
In addition, India reported 2,528 Covid cases on Friday with 149 deaths in the last 24 hours till 8:00 am, according to the Health Ministry data. Kerala added 123 deaths as a backlog to the daily death toll. The cumulative death toll in the country stood at 5.16 lakh on Friday. Also, the weekly positivity rate in the country stands at 0.40 per cent and the daily Positivity rate was reported to be at 0.40 per cent. In the previous day, the country conducted 6.33 lakh tests, taking to a total of 78.18 crore tests done so far.
With a continuous downward trend, India’s active caseload further plunged to 29,181 on Friday, comprising 0.07 per cent of the country’s total positive cases.