Maintaining the continuous declining trend, India’s daily new Covid-19 cases further declined on Sunday to 1.52 lakh cases, marking the lowest tally in the last 50 days. Even the daily positivity rate continued its streak of less than 10% for seven continuous days at around 9%, data shared by the Union Health Ministry showed.
The active caseload further dipped to 20,26,902, easing pressure on the country’s health infrastructure and states like Delhi and Uttar Pradesh which have entered the unlock phase.
“As part of continued decline in the daily new cases, 152,734 daily new cases were registered in the last 24 hours, while the death count increased to 3,29,100 with 3128 daily new fatalities,” the statement from the Health Ministry read.
The top five states that have contributed the maximum number of Covid cases to the daily infections are Tamil Nadu with 28,864 cases, followed by Karnataka with 20,378 cases, Kerala with 19,894 cases, Maharashtra with 18,600 cases and Andhra Pradesh with 13,400 cases.
Around 21.3 crore vaccine doses have been administered, as per the provisional report till 8 am on Monday. In a bid to give impetus to the inoculation drive, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan held a meeting with states and UTs on Monday and emphasised on community-based outreach approach where sessions can be conducted in non-health facility based settings and are nearer to home (e.g. in a community centre, RWA centre/office, panchayat ghar, school buildings, old age homes etc.) for elderly and differently-abled population, an advisory for Near to Home Covid Vaccination Centres (NHCVCs) for elderly and differently-abled citizens.
States/UTs were also urged to increase the number of near-to-home vaccination centres, and create awareness among the masses for use of these CVCs. Amid reports of wastage of vaccines from several states like Rajasthan, the Union Health Secretary also suggested to states/UTs to retrain and reorient vaccinators to ensure judicious usage of the vaccines.
Earlier, the Health Ministry informed states that nearly 12 crore doses will be available to them in June, enabling them to ramp up the vaccination numbers. India vaccinated over 5.3 crore doses in May.
Meanwhile, India may soon start in a few weeks testing the feasibility of a regimen that mixes two different doses of Covid vaccines to see if it helps boost immune response to virus, said Dr N.K. Arora, chairman of Covid-19 working group under National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI). Apart from this, government sources also shared that tests on the effectiveness of a single dose of Covishield will also likely begin soon as part of the government’s new strategy.
The move comes in the backdrop of the shortage of vaccine shots and disparity between availability of Covaxin and Covishield, which has slowed down the vaccination drive in the country.