<p>The Union Health Ministry on Friday exhorted five states including Karnataka to proactively curb the chain of the novel coronavirus transmission and bring Covid-19 mortality below 1% focusing on 15 districts that report high caseload and fatality.</p>.<p>As many as six districts of Karnataka - Mysuru, Bengaluru Urban, Ballari, Koppal, Dakshina Kannada, Davangere – were in focus whereas only two or three districts from other states were discussed in the meeting between officials of the ministry and state administrations.</p>.<p>Three of the five are southern states – Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.</p>.<p>Other districts that were discussed ate Chittoor and Prakasam (Andhra Pradesh); Ludhiana and Patiala (Punjab); Chennai, Coimbatore and Salem (Tamil Nadu) and Lucknow and Kanpur Nagar (Uttar Pradesh).</p>.<p>All of them have been exhibiting higher active caseload, fatality rates and a surge in the Covid-19 cases for the past four weeks.</p>.<p>Since the last five days, Andhra Pradesh has been reporting more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases daily while the fresh cases in Karnataka range between 8,800-9,800 barring August 1, when the number dropped to 6500.</p>.<p>The new case numbers in Punjab are still modest but the death count has spiked in the northern state. In Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, nearly 5000-6000 new cases are reported every day since Aug 31.</p>.<p>Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told the state official to limit and eventually break the spread of the infection by implementing stringent containment measures, following social distancing norms, maintaining strict perimeter control, and carrying out active house-to-house case search.</p>.<p>Early identification of cases by ramping up testing across the districts, optional utilisation of the gold standard RT-PCR testing capacity and use of Rapid Antigen Tests as a screening test in hotspots and densely populated areas are other measures on which states have been asked to concentrate.</p>.<p>Without identifying, Bhushan said some of the states were not using their optimal RT-PCR capacity. This could be a problem because RT-PCR has better sensitivity than antigen tests that would miss out nearly 50% of the infected individuals.</p>.<p>For the second consecutive day, India’s new cases went past the 83,000-mark with the Union Health Ministry recording 83,341 fresh cases. The death toll stands at 68,472 out of which 1096 was added in the last 24 hours. India’s total Covid-19 count stands at 39.36 lakhs with more than 8 lakh active cases.</p>
<p>The Union Health Ministry on Friday exhorted five states including Karnataka to proactively curb the chain of the novel coronavirus transmission and bring Covid-19 mortality below 1% focusing on 15 districts that report high caseload and fatality.</p>.<p>As many as six districts of Karnataka - Mysuru, Bengaluru Urban, Ballari, Koppal, Dakshina Kannada, Davangere – were in focus whereas only two or three districts from other states were discussed in the meeting between officials of the ministry and state administrations.</p>.<p>Three of the five are southern states – Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.</p>.<p>Other districts that were discussed ate Chittoor and Prakasam (Andhra Pradesh); Ludhiana and Patiala (Punjab); Chennai, Coimbatore and Salem (Tamil Nadu) and Lucknow and Kanpur Nagar (Uttar Pradesh).</p>.<p>All of them have been exhibiting higher active caseload, fatality rates and a surge in the Covid-19 cases for the past four weeks.</p>.<p>Since the last five days, Andhra Pradesh has been reporting more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases daily while the fresh cases in Karnataka range between 8,800-9,800 barring August 1, when the number dropped to 6500.</p>.<p>The new case numbers in Punjab are still modest but the death count has spiked in the northern state. In Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, nearly 5000-6000 new cases are reported every day since Aug 31.</p>.<p>Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told the state official to limit and eventually break the spread of the infection by implementing stringent containment measures, following social distancing norms, maintaining strict perimeter control, and carrying out active house-to-house case search.</p>.<p>Early identification of cases by ramping up testing across the districts, optional utilisation of the gold standard RT-PCR testing capacity and use of Rapid Antigen Tests as a screening test in hotspots and densely populated areas are other measures on which states have been asked to concentrate.</p>.<p>Without identifying, Bhushan said some of the states were not using their optimal RT-PCR capacity. This could be a problem because RT-PCR has better sensitivity than antigen tests that would miss out nearly 50% of the infected individuals.</p>.<p>For the second consecutive day, India’s new cases went past the 83,000-mark with the Union Health Ministry recording 83,341 fresh cases. The death toll stands at 68,472 out of which 1096 was added in the last 24 hours. India’s total Covid-19 count stands at 39.36 lakhs with more than 8 lakh active cases.</p>
