Virus moving to tier 2 & 3 cities, ramp up infra: Experts

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 8

India’s disease surveillance experts on Saturday said the Covid-19 pandemic was fast moving into tier 2 and 3 cities and there was an urgent need to ramp up health infrastructure in these areas.

Briefing the 25th meeting of the group of ministers (GoM) today as India’s daily deaths crossed 4,000 to reach a record 4,187 and daily cases breached 4 lakh (4,01,078) mark for the third straight day, SK Singh, Director, National Centre for Disease Control, said, “There is a need to significantly ramp up testing and hospital infrastructure in tier-2, 3 cities in view of the surge in cases.”

The GoM was told 20 districts were currently holding India’s bulk of active cases. These are Gurugram, Bengaluru (Urban), Ganjam, Pune, Delhi, Nagpur, Mumbai, Ernakulam, Lucknow, Kozhikode (Calicut), Thane, Nashik, Malappuram, Thrissur, Jaipur, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Chandrapur, Kolkata and Palakkad.

Health Minister Harsh Vardhan urged people not to skip the second vaccine dose and asked states to set aside 70 pc vaccines for the second dose. He said 1.34 per cent of active cases (37,23,446) were in the ICU, 0.39 per cent on the ventilator and 3.70 per cent on oxygen support. He said 180 districts had no fresh cases in the past seven days.