Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, March 18: Despite seeing a steady decline in Covid cases, with daily cases now below 5,000 mark, Indian government amid a resurgence of infections across Southeast Asia and Europe has asked the states not to let their guard down and advised them to continue focus on the five-fold strategy of “test, track, treat, follow Covid-appropriate behaviour and vaccinate” while resuming economic and social activities in their jurisdiction.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, in his letter to all states and union territories, also asked them to ensure adequate testing of samples to ensure timely detection of new variants and also to motivate people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
India on Friday added 2,528 new infections out of the 6,33,867 Covid tests in the last 24 hours. The accumulative Covid tally went up to 4,30,04,005 and the count of active cases dropped to 29,181 – the numbers fell below 30,000 after around 685 days, according to the Union Health Ministry. The death count due to the disease has climbed to 5,16,281 with 149 daily fatalities being recorded, data updated by the ministry at 8 am showed.
Citing the resurgence of coronavirus cases in Southeast Asia and parts of Europe, the Centre has asked the States to restart monitoring influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory infections so that no early warning signals are missed and Covid was controlled.
“States should also ensure that adequate number of samples are submitted to INSACOG network through Sentinel sites as per the protocol issued by National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), which is the Nodal Agency for INSACOG, to ensure timely detection of new variants while maintaining adequate testing as per the protocols for testing laid by ICMR. Effective surveillance by monitoring of emerging clusters of new cases, if any, testing as per norms and monitoring of ILI and SARI cases shall be taken up on a continued basis to ensure no early warning signals are missed and spread of infection can be controlled,” Bhushan said in the letter.
The state should create required awareness and ensure adherence to COVID Appropriate Behaviour, like wearing of face masks, maintaining physical distancing in all public areas/gatherings and practice of effective hand & respiratory hygiene, it said.
The government had released guidelines for graded resumption of economic activities on February 25 wherein the states were guided to resume the economic activities duly analysing the local epidemiological situation (including positivity rates and bed occupancy), to decide on the relaxation/restriction measure.
With a spike in COVID-19 cases across Southeast Asia and some countries of Europe, a high-level meeting was chaired by Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on March 16 where the states were advised to focus on aggressive genome sequencing, intensified surveillance and overall vigil on the Covid situation, Bhushan said in the letter. He further said the State machinery should create required awareness and ensure adherence to COVID-appropriate behaviour and practise effective hand- and respiratory hygiene.
The Health Ministry stressed that more than 70% of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities. “Our figures are being reconciled with the Indian Council of Medical Research,” the Ministry said on its website, adding that State-wise distribution of figures is subject to further verification and reconciliation.
After a brief respite, several countries worldwide are once again seeing an increase in Covid cases. Officials of the World Health Organisation said as many as 11 million new infections registered between March 7 and March 13, which translates to an 8% spike compared to the previous week.
“These increases are occurring despite reductions in testing in some countries, which means the cases we’re seeing are just the tip of the iceberg,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said.
Among the countries witnessing resurgence were China where lockdown has returned to many cities and school colleges closed down, South Korea which recorded over six lakh new cases in the last 24 hours, Hong Kong with more than 20,000 new cases, Italy reporting about 80,000 new cases, Britain reporting over 11,000 new cases, and Germany with more than 2.94 lakhs new cases.
