The country has reported more than 10,000 daily new COVID-19 cases after 33 days, it said stressing that there is a need for heightened vigil in view of sharp increase in infections
New Delhi:
The government on Thursday said that Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Karnataka and Gujarat are emerging as states and UTs of concern on the basis of weekly COVID-19 cases and positivity rate.
It said that eight districts are reporting over 10 per cent weekly positivity, while 14 districts are reporting between 5-10 per cent positivity.
India’s R naught value, which indicates spread of COVID-19, is 1.22 so cases are increasing, not shrinking, the government said.
The weekly positivity rate of more than 10% is being noted in 8 districts including 6 districts from Mizoram, one from Arunachal Pradesh, Kolkata in West Bengal. The weekly case positivity rate is between 5-10% in 14 districts, said Luv Aggarwal, joint secretary, Union Health Ministry.
The country has reported more than 10,000 daily new COVID-19 cases after 33 days, it said stressing that there is a need for heightened vigil in view of sharp increase in infections.
Meanwhile, in order to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus, the West Bengal government on Thursday announced that it has suspended all the flights coming to Kolkata airport from the United Kingdoms from January 3 onwards till further notice.
Evidence shows that Omicron variant has a growth advantage over Delta with doubling time of 2-3 days, the government said quoting the WHO. It said the durability of immunity post COVID-19 infection persists for about 9 months.
The government said 90 per cent of India’s adult population has been administered the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine and 63.5 per cent people are now fully vaccinated.
The precautionary dose of the vaccine is primarily to mitigate severity of infection, hospitalisation and death, it said.
The government said that masking before and after vaccination is a must. It said that earlier and currently circulating strains of coronavirus spread through the same routes and added that treatment guidelines for the infection remain the same.
It said that the whole virus infects an individual in natural settings and added that it elicits cell mediated immunity and immunological memory.
The government said that within one month 3,30,379 cases of Omicron variant and 59 deaths were reported across 121 countries.
R-value exceeds 2 in Delhi, Mumbai; indicates faster spread of coronavirus
As coronavirus cases spiral, the ‘R-value’, which indicates how rapidly the virus is spreading, has crossed two in Delhi and Mumbai, researchers said on Thursday.
Chennai, Pune, Bengaluru and Kolkata have R-value (or reproduction number) of over 1, as per the data study by the researchers of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.
Sitabhra Sinha, who led the study, said the R-value of Delhi stood at 2.54 between December 23-29, while for Mumbai it was 2.01 between December 23-28.
Both these cities have seen an exponential rise in cases.
Pune and Bengaluru recorded R-value of 1.11. The R-value of Kolkata and Chennai was 1.13 and 1.26, respectively.
Since mid-October, the R-value of all these cities was over 1. What is new was the sudden rise. The fact that Delhi and Mumbai crossed the R-value 2 is quite surprising, Sinha told PTI. Delhi on Wednesday reported a massive jump in daily COVID-19 infections with 923 fresh cases, the highest since May 30 and 86 per cent up from a day earlier.
The positivity rate in Delhi crossed 1 per cent after six months to reach 1.29 per cent. On December 20, 91 new COVID-19 cases had been recorded in the national capital, but the figure climbed to 923 on Wednesday.
The COVID-19 positivity rate in Delhi thus jumped to 1.29 per cent from 0.19 per cent between December 23 and December 29. Similarly, Mumbai on Wednesday reported 2,510 COVID-19 cases, the highest daily addition since May 8, 2021, besides one death.
On December 20, only 283 cases had been reported in Mumbai, whereas on Tuesday the financial capital of the country recorded 1,377 cases, and on Wednesday the figure went up by 80 per cent. The Reproduction number or R refers to how many people an infected person infects on average.
In other words, it tells how ‘efficiently’ a virus is spreading. An R value of less than 1 denotes that the disease is on decline.
Conversely, if R is greater than 1, it means the number of infected people is increasing in each round — technically it becomes the ‘epidemic phase’.
COVID vaccines, whether they are from India, Israel, US, Europe, UK or China, are primarily disease-modifying. They don’t prevent infection. The precautionary dose is primarily to mitigate the severity of infection, hospitalization, & death, said, Dr Balram Bhargava,director general, Indian Council of Medical Research.