The daily positivity rate was at 0.31 per cent while the weekly positivity rate stood at 0.34 per cent. (Express Photo)Covid-19 India Live Updates: A day after India saw a 90 per cent jump in daily cases, the health ministry on Tuesday directed three states and the union territory of Delhi to enforce adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour with particular emphasis on wearing masks in crowded areas. The country recorded 1,274 new Covid-19 cases and one death in the 24 hours ending 8 am Tuesday, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Active cases currently stand at 11,860 and comprise 0.03 per cent of the total infections. The recovery rate remained unchanged at 98.76 per cent and 928 recoveries were reported on Monday. The daily positivity rate was at 0.31 per cent while the weekly positivity rate stood at 0.34 per cent.
Delhi on Tuesday recorded 632 fresh Covid-19 cases with a marginal drop in the positivity rate from Monday’s 7.72 per cent to 4.42 per cent. No fatalities were reported. The number of active cases stood at 1,947. On Monday, the city had recorded 501 cases, while 517 infections were logged on Sunday with a positivity rate of 4.21%. The Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) will take stock of the situation and meet on April 20.
Meanwhile, the Kerala government has rejected allegations that the state did not submit daily Covid-19 figures to the Centre and termed an ongoing campaign at the national level in this connection as “condemnable”. Claiming that the state had submitted the COVID figures to the central government on a daily basis in the prescribed format without any fail, Health Minister Veena George said the digital evidences could not be covered up. Noting that Kerala reporting Covid-19 data after a gap of five days has skewed India’s key monitoring indicators of the pandemic such as cases, deaths and positivity rate, the Centre had asked the state to provide updated data daily.
Coronavirus India Live: A healthcare worker collects a swab sample of a woman for Covid-19 testing, at a market in Jammu, Friday, April 15, 2022. (PTI Photo)
Delhi on Tuesday recorded 632 fresh Covid-19 cases with a marginal drop in the positivity rate from Monday's 7.72 per cent to 4.42 per cent. No fatalities were reported.
With the fresh addition, the cumulative caseload rose to 18,69,683, while the death toll remained at 26,160. The number of active cases stood at 1,947. Read More
Maharashtra on Tuesday reported 137 COVID-19 cases and three deaths, taking the state's tally to 78,76,041 and the toll to 1,47,830, an official said. The addition to the tally was more than double of the 59 cases detected on Monday, when the fatality count was zero.
While Mumbai accounted for 85 of the 137 cases, the three deaths comprised two in Pune city and one in Parbhani, he said.
So far, 77,27,551 people have been discharged post recovery so far, including 108 in the last 24 hours, leaving the state with an active caseload of 660. State health department data showed that Sindhudurg, Jalgaon, Nandurbar, Dhule, Jalna, Parbhani, Nanded, Osmanabad, Washim, Buldhana, Yavatmal, Bhandara and Wardha had no active case at present. (PTI)
The mandatory wearing of masks as a precautionary measure against Covid-19 has not yet been lifted from Odisha and people should use them in crowded places, a senior health official said on Tuesday.
Though the coronavirus situation in the state is stable with the daily infections hovering between 10 and 20, it is important to follow COVID appropriate behaviour, Health Services Director Bijay Mohapatra told reporters here.
“The condition will be under control if everyone continues following Covid-19 guidelines,” Mohapatra said. (PTI)
The Chamber of Trade and Industry (CTI) on Tuesday appealed to the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) not to impose coronavirus restrictions merely on the basis of positivity rate. The traders' body in a letter to the DDMA also requested it to make it mandatory to wear masks in public if the situation demands.
The request from the traders' body comes a day before a crucial meeting of the DDMA where it is likely to discuss the mandatory use of face masks and hybrid mode of offline and online teaching for schoolchildren, in view of rising number of infections in past many days.
The DDMA meeting chaired by Lt Governor Anil Baijal will also review the Covid-19 situation in the national capital. (PTI)
Though Covid cases are rising in Delhi and its satellite towns, the focus should be on hospital admissions that have remained the same or changed just marginally, say several scientists, underscoring that the uptick is not an indication of a fourth wave in the country at this point.
The removal of Covid-19 restrictions, including schools reopening for offline classes, increased socialising and economic activity may be driving the spike in the national capital and its surrounding areas, and some other pockets, they said.
“It has been more than two weeks since all Covid-19 restrictions have been removed. It is a holiday period and people are meeting and intermingling. This is also reflected in social mobility and economic activity, which are higher than pre-pandemic periods,” physician-epidemiologist Chandrakant Lahariya told PTI while also advising caution and stressing on continued surveillance.
"Merely counting cases has no meaning... though cases are rising in Delhi, hospital admission remains unchanged or marginally changed," he said. (PTI)
The Kerala government on Tuesday rejected allegations that the state did not submit daily Covid-19 figures to the Centre and termed an ongoing campaign at the national level in this connection as "condemnable".
Claiming that the state had submitted the COVID figures to the central government on a daily basis in the prescribed format without any fail, Health Minister Veena George said the digital evidences could not be covered up. She also expressed displeasure over the media getting hold of the copy of a letter sent by the union joint secretary before it reached the principal secretary of the state health department.
The state would soon submit a reply to the Centre's letter attaching all the details, the minister told reporters. (PTI)
The insurance scheme for healthcare workers engaged in Covid-19 related duties has been extended further for a period of 180 days from Tuesday, and 1,905 claims have been settled under it so far, the Government said on Tuesday.
The Union Health Ministry said it has been decided to extend the policy to provide a safety net to dependents of health workers who are deputed to take care of Covid-19 patients.
Since the launch of the 'Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKP): insurance scheme for healthcare workers fighting Covid-19 on March 30, 2020, 1,905 claims of health workers who died while being deployed on Covid-19 related duties have been settled, the ministry said. (PTI)
Thirty-three children were among 107 people who tested positive for Covid-19 in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddh Nagar district on Tuesday, officials said. The number of active cases in Gautam Buddh Nagar, adjoining Delhi, has reached 411, they said.
According to the official figures, 107 more people have tested positive since Monday 6 am while 32 patients got cured during this period.
Amid a rise in Covid-19 cases, District Magistrate Suhas L Yathiraj had on Sunday urged public to not panic but take precaution against the virus. (PTI)
As many as 30 per cent people infected with COVID-19 developed Long COVID, a set of symptoms that persist for months beyond the initial phase of a SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to a study conducted in the US.
Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the US found that people with a history of hospitalisation, diabetes, and higher body mass index were mostly likely to develop Post Acute Sequelae of Covid-19
(PASC), commonly known as Long COVID.
The study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, found that ethnicity, older age, and socioeconomic status were not associated with the syndrome even though those characteristics have been linked with severe illness and greater risk of death from Covid-19. (PTI)
Experts say that the current surge could be because of restrictions being lifted, and though masking in public places – especially crowded markets and enclosed spaces such as cinemas – is necessary, there is no need to panic.
“We are seeing a surge in India. It is only to be expected. Our team has been tracking these metrics for more than two years. We are all tired, but the virus is still there. Time to elevate your personal preventions, combat COVID with caution. Choose prudence over panic,” professor of epidemiology at University of Michigan’s School of Public Health Bhramar Mukherjee said in a tweet.
As per Delhi-based doctors, while the number of cases is on the rise, “hospitalisations are not”. Most of the affected people are reporting to outpatient clinics with fever, cough, sore throat, and head and body ache. “I do not think that this is a separate wave. The numbers are going up because people aren’t masking up anymore; this was expected. The symptoms that we are currently seeing in patients are similar to what was seen during the surge in January,” said Dr Rajesh Chawla, senior consultant of respiratory medicine at Indraprastha Apollo hospital. (Read more here)
Shanghai authorities on Tuesday pleaded for public cooperation with a massive new push to test most of the population for Covid-19 as the city steps up efforts to bring community transmission down to zero after nearly three weeks of lockdown.
The plea came as some people refused to join PCR testing queues out of weariness after weeks of such requirements, or fear it puts them at greater risk of infection.
Residents shared stories on social media about busloads of people being taken from their homes and sent into quarantine, including babies and the elderly. Authorities are under pressure from Beijing to speed up transfers of positive cases and their close contacts to quarantine centres, fueling angst in the community about draconian measures designed to completely stop the spread of the virus rather than just slow it down.
Shanghai reported seven more deaths due to Covid-19 as the Chinese financial hub grapples with a record outbreak, taking the total death toll in the country to 4,648 with over 21,400 new cases, most of them from the city. Seven new deaths from Covid-19 were reported on Monday in Shanghai in addition to the three a day earlier, the first in the recent outbreak, taking the total death toll in the country due to coronavirus since it emerged in Wuhan in 2019 to 4,648, according to figures released by China's National Health Commission on Tuesday.
The late surge of Omicron variant of the coronavirus in China continues unabated as the country has reported 3,297 locally-transmitted confirmed Covid-19 cases, of which 3,084 were in Shanghai. Apart from Shanghai, 18 other provincial-level regions on the mainland saw new local Covid-19 cases, including 88 in the northeastern province of Jilin, the Commission report said. (With PTI)
Till Tuesday, India has administered over 186.72 crore Covid-19 vaccine doses under the nationwide vaccination drive.
In Haryana, masks will be made mandatory in Gurgaon, Faridabad, Sonipat and Jhajjar. Of the 238 new cases reported in the state on Monday, 198 were from Gurgaon and 22 from Faridabad; more than half the districts in the state reported no new case.
In UP, masks have been made mandatory in Gautam Buddha Nagar, Ghaziabad, Hapur, Meerut, Bulandshahr and Baghpat. Most of the new cases reported in the state on Sunday were from two of these districts.
While 76 new cases were reported from Gautam Buddha Nagar, 33 were from Ghaziabad, 7 from Lucknow, 2 each from Meerut and Bulandshahr, and one from Baghpat on Sunday. These are also the districts with the highest number of active cases. Of the 695 active cases in Uttar Pradesh, Gautam Buddha Nagar has 280, Ghaziabad 113, Lucknow 41, Meerut 11, Bulandshahr 5, and Baghpat 2.
With Covid-19 cases rising again, the Uttar Pradesh and Haryana governments on Monday made masks mandatory in the districts surrounding Delhi. Delhi, UP and Haryana scrapped the fine for not wearing masks in public in the first week of April.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain Monday said though the number of Covid-19 cases are rising in the national capital, it is not an alarming situation as the rate of hospitalisation is low. He also said that the government is keeping a watch on the situation.
He underlined that it is necessary to wear face masks, even though the fine for not doing so had been withdrawn. A crucial meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority on Wednesday is expected to consider the reimposition of fine for not wearing face masks.
A day after India saw a 90 per cent jump in daily cases, the country recorded 1,274 new Covid-19 cases and one death in the 24 hours ending 8 am Tuesday, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Active cases currently stand at 11,860 and comprise 0.03 per cent of the total infections. The recovery rate remained unchanged at 98.76 per cent and 928 recoveries were reported on Monday.
Delhi's Covid-19 positivity rate on Monday jumped to 7.72 per cent even as the city recorded 501 fresh cases, 16 less than the previous day, according to health department data. Officials said that last time the positivity rate was above seven per cent in the city on January 29 (7.4 per cent) and on January 28 (8.6 per cent).
Barring Sunday, Delhi has been witnessing an upward trend in daily COVID-19 cases positivity rate in the last few days. Despite less tests the positivity rate in the city on Monday rose to 7.72 per cent. The national capital on Sunday recorded a 4.21 per cent positivity rate.
Centre asks Kerala to provide updated COVID-19 data daily, says state reporting figures after gap of 5 days has skewed India's key pandemic monitoring indicators such as cases, deaths and positivity rate. --PTI