New Delhi: Eight of the top 10 districts in the country with most active cases are in Maharashtra, the Union Ministry of Health said in its weekly Covid-19 briefing Thursday.
The districts are Pune (18,474), Nagpur (12,724), Thane (10,460), Mumbai (9,973), Amravati (5,259), Jalgaon (5,029), Nashik (4,525) and Aurangabad (4,354). The two others in the list are Bengaluru Urban in Karnataka (5,526) and Ernakulam in Kerala (5,430).
While the disease is showing an upward curve throughout the country, the two highest active case burden states of Kerala and Maharashtra are now showing divergent trends.
In the last one month, active cases in Kerala almost halved — to 35,715 on 11 March from 64,607 on 11 February.
But Maharashtra has seen an explosive spurt in active cases — to 1,00,240 on 11 March from 36,917 on 11 February.
In the same period, Punjab’s active cases increased by over 400 per cent — to 9,402 from 2,112.
Haryana’s active cases went up to 2,440 from 824, Gujarat’s to 3,529 from 1,800 and Madhya Pradesh’s to 3,915 from 1,951 in the same one-month period.
Dr Balram Bhargava, ICMR chief and secretary, department of health research, reiterated that mutant strains are not responsible for the surge.
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‘Do no take virus for granted’
Describing this surge of cases as a worrying trend, Dr V.K. Paul, member (health) NITI Aayog, said gaps in testing, tracking and containment, coupled with Covid inappropriate behaviour among citizens has led to this spike.
“We are very worried about Maharashtra … across several districts of Maharashtra, as we came in we learnt that a strict lockdown is happening in Nagpur. We are reaching a stage when those measures are coming back,” he said.
“There are two lessons for us. One, do not take the virus for granted. It can come up unexpectedly, and it also tells us (that) if we are to remain free of the virus, it is important that all our armamentarium — Covid appropriate behaviour, readiness of health facilities etc., — cannot slacken,” Dr Paul added.
‘0.020% people showed side-effects’
Giving out the figures of adverse effects following immunisation (AEFI) after several weeks, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that of the over 2 crore people who have received the vaccines so far, only 0.020 per cent have reported side-effects and only 0.00025 per cent required hospitalisation.
Congratulating Indian scientists for the emergency use authorisation of Covaxin, Dr Paul said of the 19 lakh people who have received the indigenous vaccine so far, only 311 people have shown side-effects.
However, the number of people who have died after vaccination wasn’t revealed.
Additional secretary, health ministry, Manohar Agnani said that two deaths have been analysed so far, but none of them have been found to be causally linked to vaccinations.
Bhushan also refused to give out the number of vaccine doses being procured, but said the government has now worked out a per-dose pricing that is substantially less than earlier.
Sources in the ministry of health said each dose of Covishield, developed by Oxford University and manufactured in India by the Serum Institute of India, will now cost less than Rs 150.
Asked about the variable daily vaccination numbers, Bhushan said, “We are not in a race. There is no gold medal to be won. Our capacity is to vaccinate 20 lakh people every day.”
Earlier during the briefing, he showed several slides to make his point that India’s vaccination pace is among the fastest in the world — based solely on the number of vaccine doses administered and the number of days in which it was done, without any reference to the population figures.
(Edited by Debalina Dey)
Also read: Active Covid cases rise as Maharashtra records highest single-day spike since November