The Health Ministry has written to the State governments and the Union Territory administrations to put in place a robust system for the reporting and gathering of information on the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines once they are rolled out.
The Ministry has identified initiatives to strengthen the reporting of Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFI), said a letter by Manohar Agnani, Additional Secretary, Health Ministry. The States and the Union Territories have been requested to implement the steps.
The Ministry has asked that more medical specialists be part of the AEFI committees. “COVID-19 vaccination will be given to adults many of whom may have co-morbidities. Events due to pre-existing co-morbidities (stroke/heart attacks, etc) may be reported as AEFI following COVID vaccination. Membership of State AEFI committees should be revised to include neurologists, cardiologists, respiratory medicine specialists who can recognise such events and differentiate them from events related to vaccine and vaccination. Similarly, direction may be issued to districts to include medical specialists (neurologists and cardiologists) in district AEFI committees,” the letter said.
Case load
Delhi again reported the highest daily number of new COVID-19 cases at 4,454 and casualties at 121. Maharashtra followed with 4,153 new cases.
At least 480 case fatalities have been reported in the past 24 hours, and 10 States and Union Territories account for 73.54% of new deaths, noted a release issued by the Health Ministry on Tuesday.
“Delhi has also reported the maximum number of single day recoveries with 7,216 newly recovered cases. 5,425 people recovered in Kerala followed by 3,729 in Maharashtra. 77.04% of the new cases are from 10 States and UTs. The recovery rate has also increased to 93.76% and the recoveries currently stands at 86,04,955. 75.71% of the new recovered cases are observed to be concentrated in 10 States/UTs,” it said.
The release noted that India had registered fewer than 40,000 daily new cases after six days. The number of daily new cases was 37,975. For the last 17 days in a row, daily new cases had been below the 50,000 mark.
Giving details of India’s testing infrastructure, the Ministry said the country currently had 2,134 labs. “10,99,545 samples were tested in the last 24 hours. An average of more than 10 lakh tests conducted daily has ensured that the cumulative positivity rate is sustained at low levels and is presently following a downward trajectory,” the release said.
The cumulative national positivity rate stands at 6.87% currently as per the Ministry and the daily positivity rate is 3.45%.
“Higher volumes of testing eventually lead to low positivity rate. The tests per million (TPM) has increased to 96,871 tests. There has been a sustained decrease in the number of active cases over the past few weeks. 42,314 cases recovered and discharged in the last 24 hours. The active case load has fallen to 4,38,667. The present contribution of active case load to India’s total positive cases stands at 4.78%, following a declining curve,” the Ministry added.