Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 24

A year since the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed to break the chain of viral transmission, the country finds itself battling a second surge of the infection with the Centre on Wednesday terming “Maharashtra and Punjab as areas of gravest concern”.

Of the 47,262 (the highest daily case tally this year and the highest in 132 days), more than 28,699 are from Maharashtra and 2,634 from Punjab.

“Punjab is a specific worry as cases are rising disproportionately to the population and the vaccine coverage among health workers is extremely low at 65.11 per cent. While 10 states have achieved 100 per cent coverage of health workers with the first dose, Punjab, despite adequate vaccine supplies, has not been able to cover even the identified groups. Likewise, only 63 per cent of the health workers have received the first shots in Chandigarh,” Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said. The Centre will meet district magistrates and health officials of Punjab’s most affected districts — Jalandhar; SAS Nagar, Ludhiana, Patiala and Hoshiarpur — for a review on Saturday.

In another major development, the government disclosed that the apex genome sequencing consortium had detected 771 Covid variants of concern (VOCs) in 18 states. Of these, 736 were positive for the UK variant; 34 for the South African and one for the Brazilian variant. Of the 771 VOCs, 336 are in Punjab alone and all are UK strains.

Asked if the surge was linked to the mutations, Member, Health, NITI Aayog, VK Paul said the variants were not in enough numbers to be linked to the surge some states like Maharashtra, Kerala and Punjab were witnessing. Both Indian-made vaccines were effective against UK and Brazil strains and studies on the South African variant were underway.

“Mutations of the virus are natural and there is no cause for panic. But we need to be cautious,” Paul said, adding that India had not seen any case of blood clotting due to Covishield.

“There is no inadequacy in the availability of vaccines. The systems are ready. But we must expand using private facilities,” said Paul.

In Punjab, only 38.48% of all Covid vaccine centres are private and in Haryana 21.24%.

Mutants detected across 18 states

Spike in infections not due to mutations: Government

So far no linkage seen with surge due to foreign travellers, says the government. The variants detected in India have been prevalent for the past 6-8 months.
10,787 total samples from foreign travellers
‘Variants of concern’ Punjab 336 | Telangana 104 | Delhi 69 | Maharashtra 62 | Haryana 6 | Ladakh 1