7.7.21

73 districts still have over 10% Covid positivity

Even as Covid-19 cases have declined significantly in most parts of the country, around 73 districts still have more than10% positivity. Also, nearly 80% of the total new cases have been reported from 90 districts, official data show indicating the second wave is now limited to certain areas needing focused measures and intensive restrictions to control further spread.

Arunachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Manipur, Kerala and Meghalaya are the top five states having maximum number of districts with above 10% test positivity. The northeastern states together also account for 47 districts with high positivity rate.

“The second wave has come down in most states. However, some states are still in the midst of the second wave. This heterogeneity, in the large country that we have, has to be appreciated and district specific measures should continue to be guided by test positivity rate,” Indian Council of Medical Research director general Balram Bhargava said.

Apart from the 73 districts with above 10% positivity, 65 districts have positivity ranging between 5-10% and rest 595 have below 5% positivity.

The overall caseload of active cases have dropped to below 5 lakh cases with only 91 districts now reporting more than 100 cases daily, down from 262 districts in the beginning of June and 531 in the start of May.

With average daily tests at 18.30 lakh, the weekly positivity rate now stands at 2.7%.

The Centre emphasised on the need for aggressive testing, particularly in states with large number of districts with high test positivity and fresh Covid-19 cases.

“Testing has played a key role in our fight against the pandemic and it has to continue. Currently, we are doing 1,400 tests per million, which is 10 times the recommendations of the WHO, but we should continue because during the second wave, much of our public health response was guided by test positivity rate and that really helped us bring this wave down very fast,” Bhargava said.

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