86 pc Covid cases in 10 states; half in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 14

As India’s COVID case count crossed the 9 lakh-mark on Tuesday, the Government analysis of the disease showed its spread is not uniform across the country.

The virus continues to spread in localised ways with 86 per cent of all nine lakh plus cases in just 10 states and half of all cases in just Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu alone.

The eight states with 36 per cent burden of the disease are Karnataka, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, UP, Telangana, West Bengal, Gujarat and Assam.

Many large states like Assam, Bihar, Himachal, Kerala, MP and Haryana are not reporting large outbreaks signalling that the disease can be addressed with active surveillance, containment and testing.

ICMR chief Balram Bhargava said it was India’s moral duty to fast track COVID vaccine development and ensure not even a day is lost on regulatory approvals while ensuring that science and ethics are not compromised.

He said all nations are in touch with India which will play a major role in scaling up the production of whichever COVID vaccine is developed first. India supplies 60 per cent of world vaccine requirements. Bhargava said India’s two indigenous vaccine candidates are on phase one and two human trial stage and will be tested on 1,000 human volunteers each.

Health Ministry OSD Rajesh Bhushan today also said the rate of growth of active cases was on a progressive decline from 31 per cent in March to 9 per cent in May to 4.82 per cent in May end go 3.24 per cent on July 12.

“In March active cases were far higher than the recovered. But now we have 5,71,459 recoveries as against 3,11,565 active cases,” said Bhushan, adding that the disease spread was not uniform nor do absolute number of cases tell the real story of disease management in a country like India with the second highest population in the world.

Declining rate of daily growth in cases is an important indicator of nation’s response to the outbreak, Bhushan said.

He also said 20 states had recovery rates higher than India’s average of 63.02 per cent and 22 states were testing more than 140 persons per day per million which is the threshold for comprehensive testing as mentioned by the WHO in case of India.

“We have urged every state to test more than 140 people per day per 10 lakh people, Bhushan said. India’s average testing is 201 per day per million,” he added.

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