Restart monitoring ILI, SARI cases, Centre tells states amid Covid-19 surge in southeast Asia

With a spike in Covid-19 cases across Southeast Asia and some countries of Europe, Mansukh Mandaviya chaired a high-level meeting on March 16

Amid a resurgence of Covid-19 cases across China, South Korea, East Asia and Europe, the Union Health Ministry has asked the states to step up disease surveillance so that early warning signals are not missed besides advising the states to quickly complete the vaccination for eligible individuals.

The states have also been cautioned not to lower their guards and send adequate numbers of samples to the INSACOG (Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics) laboratories for genome sequencing for timely detection of any new variant.

Following a high-level review of the Covid-19 resurgence, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan Thursday wrote to the states, elaborating on the strategies they should follow to keep a close watch on the Covid situation.

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"Effective surveillance by monitoring of emerging clusters of new cases, if any, testing as per norms and monitoring of ILI (influenza-like illness) and SARI (severe acute respiratory illness) cases shall be taken up on a continued basis to ensure that no early warning signals are missed and spread of infection can be controlled,” Bhushan wrote.

“It is vital that states may ensure that all eligible persons are motivated to get vaccinated against Covid-19 as per the recent expansion of vaccination drive to young adults and precautionary doses for adults besides the completion of doses for all adults,” he said.

More than 83% of India’s 94.47 crore adults are fully vaccinated while 97% got a single dose. Nearly half of the 15-18 year population received two doses and after the vaccination programme was extended for 12-14-year-old children, more than 11 lakh kids got the jab.

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The global average daily Covid-19 cases, which was on a steady decline since the middle of January, began to increase once again in the last ten days riding on the rapid spread of the infection in a few Chinese provinces, South Korea, and parts of East Asia and Europe.

“It is clear that the virus is still evolving and spreading at the global level. Many countries of Europe and East Asia are seeing a sharp rise in infections, even though persons who have retained some immunity from previous infections or vaccinations are mostly protected from severe illness and death,” said K Srinath Reddy, president, Public Health Foundation of India.

“India is in a good position presently because the second wave and vaccines conferred immunity to many in the last year. However, we must continue to adopt Covid appropriate behaviours, since the virus can generate new variants that may pose a threat to persons whose immunity has waned. It would be incorrect to assume that the world has reached a stage of stable endemicity. So, India too must remain on guard,” he told DH.

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On the resurgence, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Covid-19 cases were increasing despite reductions in testing, suggesting it was just the tip of an iceberg.

The WHO’s Western Pacific Region (comprising China and South Korea), African Region and European Region reported an increase in new weekly cases of 29%, 12% and 2% respectively compared to the previous week.

Bhushan asked the states to ensure that an adequate number of samples were submitted to the INSACOG network through sentinel sites for timely detection of new variants while maintaining adequate testing as per protocol.

While the identity of the variant that re-surfaced in China is unknown (Beijing doesn’t deposit their samples in international databases), it is highly transmissible Omicron and its sub-variants, mostly BA.2 that is being seen in Europe and Asia.

Continuing the downward slide, India reported just about 2500 new cases on Thursday. The total number of active cases has dropped to below 30,000.

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