GUWAHATI:
Assam is yet to get any written commitment from the Centre on procurement of Covid-19 vaccine, top official sources in the health department said.
Considering the recent spike in the number of positive cases in other parts of the country, especially in the northwest and central India, the Assam health department has asked district health authorities to conduct a minimum of 30,000 tests a day from Monday. The number of Covid tests even went below 10,000 of late in the state following decline in positivity rate.
“The hope is that Assam will get a vaccine either in December or January, but the state health department has not received any written commitment from any agency. There is no other option than escalating the number of tests amid concerns of spike in cases,” said a top official of the Assam health department.
Though at 5,938, Assam is among 15 states and Union Territories reporting less than the national average of cases (6,591) per million population, health officials said a minimum 30,000 tests is necessary to sustain the current positivity rate.
Executive director of National Health Mission (NHM), Assam Dr Manoj Choudhury told TOI that the fresh move to intensify testing has been initiated in wake of a sudden upsurge in Covid cases in other parts of the country.
But an analysis by NHM, Assam, on the doubling time of Covid-19 cases stated that according to the last seven days’ trend of new cases, the total cases in Assam will take 756.6 days to double.
A total of 223 cases were detected out of 19,844 tests conducted on Saturday, with a positivity rate of 1.12%. Kamrup (Metro) district recorded the highest 70 cases. Altogether, 2,07,219 patients have been discharged till Saturday night.
Though cumulative figures of total positive cases in the state stood at 2,11,427 as on Saturday night, 98.01% percent of them have recovered, state minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said. There are only 3,232 active cases in the state.
MHFW stated that India’s present active caseload (4,40,962) has declined to 4.85% of the total positive cases, and has been sustained below the 5% mark. The recovery rate has improved to 93.69% on Sunday, as the country registered 43,493 new recoveries in the last 24 hours, taking the total recovered cases to 85,21,617. At 27, Assam is among the 21 states and UTs that are reporting lower than the national average of deaths per million (96).