The Union Health Ministry in a press conference on Friday said the Centre has requested the States to identify districts where the weekly positivity rate is above 10% or bed occupancy is over 60% and impose the highest level of restrictions for at least 14 days to break the chain of transmission of the COVID-19 infection. There are 71 districts with a positivity rate of over 10%, the Health Ministry noted.
Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry said the country has witnessed a decline of 13% in COVID-19 cases as compared to last week. On average, we are reporting 46,000 cases (daily) in the country, he added.
"There has been a decline of 86% in active cases since the peak. Under the continued focus of clinical management, the recovery rate, which was at 81.1% on May 3rd, is now at around 97%," Aggarwal said.
Speaking about the vaccination drive, Aggarwal said India has administered over 34 crore doses of COVID vaccine, maximum across the world. This is followed by the US with 32.8 crore doses & the UK with 7.79 crore doses, he added.
Centre rushes teams to six states reporting high number of COVID-19 cases:
The Centre on Friday deputed multi-disciplinary teams to Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Manipur in view of the high number of COVID-19 cases being reported by these states.
Teams will be supporting the states in their efforts to carry out a targeted COVID response and management, and effectively tackling the pandemic, a Union Health Ministry statement said.
The two-member high-level team to these states comprises a clinician and a public health expert, the statement said.
The teams will visit the states immediately and monitor the overall implementation of COVID-19 management, especially in testing, including surveillance and containment operations; Covid Appropriate Behaviour and its enforcement; availability of hospital beds, sufficient logistics including ambulances, ventilators, medical oxygen etc., and COVID-19 vaccination progress.
The teams will monitor the situation and also suggest remedial actions, the statement said.
The Central teams will assess the situation and suggest remedial actions on public health activities to the respective state governments.
(With PTI inputs)
