Some states showing very early signs of plateauing in daily new Covid-19 cases: Centre

There are 22 states where the positivity rate is more than 15 per cent

As India continued to add more than 3.5 lakh Covid-19 cases every day, the government on Monday said it had picked up early signs of plateauing of infections and deaths and cautioned against lowering the guard in dealing with the pandemic.

India crossed the two-crore mark of Covid-19 cases on Monday with 80 lakh patients reporting positive for the infectious disease since March 27.

On Monday morning, India added 3.68 lakh new cases of Covid-19, fewer than 4.01 lakh new infections that was reported on May 1.

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The health ministry said 13 states, including Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Punjab, were showing early signs of plateauing and urged citizens to continue following Covid appropriate behaviour to sustain the nascent gains.

“However, these are very early signals and it is too early to analyse the situation. We have to continue efforts of containment at district and state level so that we can preserve these gains and reduce cases further,” Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry, told reporters.

Agarwal said Durg, Gariyaband, Raipur, Rajnandgaon districts in Chhattisgarh; Chhindwara, Guna, Shajapur in Madhya Pradesh, Leh in Ladakh; Nirmal in Telangana were showing signs of decline in cases in the last 15 days.

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Twelve districts of Maharashtra too were showing signs of a decline in the last fortnight.

At the same time, Agarwal said there were 12 states – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu – where active cases were more than one lakh, which was a “worrying” trend.

He said 22 states had a case positivity rate of more than 15 per cent and Andaman and Nicobar, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Odisha, Pudcherry, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Tripura and West Bengal were showing an increasing trend in daily cases.