Centre identifies 11 'states of grave concern' amid surge in Covid-19 cases

India reported over 80,000 Covid-19 cases on Friday

As India’s Covid-19 tally crossed the 80,000 mark on Friday, the Centre identified 11 states and union territories including Karnataka as “states of grave concerns” since they have contributed 90% of Covid-19 cases and deaths in the last two weeks.

Others on the list are Maharashtra, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Rajasthan besides the union territory of Chandigarh. The situation, officials said, was particularly worrying in Maharashtra, Punjab and Chhattisgarh.

Each of these states have either crossed or close to crossing their early reported peaks during the first wave seen last year, the Union Health Ministry said in a statement after Cabinet Secretary Rajib Gauba reviewed the situation with top officials from the states and asked them to use every legal power they have to stem such an alarming growth of the epidemic.

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Gauba told Chief Secretaries, Director Generals of Police and senior health professionals that the growth of Covid-19 caseload stood at 6.8% in March 2021, which had surpassed the previous record of 5.5% recorded in June 2020.

While India reported over 97,000 daily new cases at the peak of the pandemic last September, more than 81,000 new cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours.

Worryingly in the first wave, the tally (seven day moving average) crossed from 20K cases to 60K in about 36 days and grew from 60K to 80k in 25 days. But in the second wave, the shift from 20K cases to 40K happened in just 8 days and from 40K to 60K in 11 days.

On the daily count, the epidemic further grew from 53,000 cases to 81,000 cases in just three days, adding nearly 30,000 new infections within 72 hours.

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The Cabinet secretary told the state officials to use the Police Act, Disaster Management Act and other legal and administrative provisions for imposing penalties on defaulters to ensure people wear masks and follow the social distancing norms.

The officials were told to focus on markets, fairs, and social and religious congregations that could turn out to be super spreader events.

Observing that vaccination is one of the five tools to contain the surge, Gauba said enhanced testing, strict containment, prompt contact tracing and enforcement of Covid-19 appropriate behaviour were equally important to bring down the numbers.

States were asked to set up containment zones or micro containment zones and carry out daily monitoring of positive patients living at home to ensure that they stay isolated.

Moreover, the states will have to increase their testing continuously to ensure that positivity comes down to 5% or less than 5%. Also the task is to ensure that RT-PCR tests comprise 70% of total tests, which is not the case at the moment.