NEW DELHI, July 31: The centre has asked the states to re-impose restrictions in the districts recording more than 10 per cent Covid positivity rate. According to the health ministry data, 46 districts in the country are reporting more than a 10 per cent positivity rate and 53 districts are proceeding towards the danger zone as their positivity rate is between 5 per cent and 10 per cent.
The union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Saturday chaired a high-level meeting with 10 states which are either reporting a rise in new daily Covid cases or a rise in the positivity rate. All districts that have been reporting a positivity rate of more than 10 per cent in the past few weeks need to consider strict restrictions, the health secretary said to the representatives of Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur.
Any laxity at this stage will result in the deterioration of the situation in these districts, the ministry noted. Director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research Dr Balram Bhargava, who was also present in the meeting, said 40,000 daily cases is not any reason for complacency.
The states have been given a four-point guideline which includes: 1. Intensive containment and surveillance in clusters that are reporting higher cases, 2. Mapping cases, tracing contacts and defining containment zones based on these, 3. Ramping up health infrastructure in rural areas with a focus on paediatric care, 4. Reporting death count as per ICMR guideline.
Dr Bhagrava also advised these states to avoid all non-essential travel and to discourage all large gatherings of a crowd.
In these 10 states, the ministry noted, over 80 per cent of active cases are in home isolation. Stressing the need to monitor these people, the ministry said there should be local surveillance, at the levels of community, village mohalla, ward etc., to monitor these patients and whether they need hospitalisation.
Districts which have a case positivity rate between 5 and 10 per cent should also be careful and what they can do is to focus on the saturation of vaccination, the ministry said. Since the Centre now informs the states how much vaccine doses they are going do get, states can concentrate on these districts, the ministry advised these states.
Dr Bhargava reiterated that states should also focus on vaccinating senior citizens as this age group reports nearly 80 per cent of the mortality.
The Centre has flagged the Covid-19 situation of Kerala, Maharashtra and the northeast states as not positive like the other states in the country. While Maharashtra has hit a plateau of daily 8,000 new infections, the situation in Kerala has turned into worrying. A central team has been sent to Kerala which will visit the worst-hit districts and will probe into the sudden spike. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have reported a small spike in the number of cases following which both the states have tightened restrictions.