BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 16
Trend:
As the country’s daily new Covid-19 cases fell 85 per cent from the May 7 peak and daily positivity dropped to a three-month low of 3.45 per cent, surging crowds at metros, malls, railway stations and tourist hubs worried the government with the Health Ministry advising people to minimise the use of public transport, avoid crowding and told states to continue focusing on micro-containment.
“The gains can be reversed in a day,” Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Health, cautioned, asking people to cycle or walk instead of using public transport and to absolutely avoid rush hours.
The second Covid wave has receded significantly from its peak of 4.14 lakh cases on May 7 to 60,471 today signalling localised infections.
Active cases that need treatment at home or hospitals are below 10 lakh (9,13,378) after 65 days — a 75.6 per cent fall.
“We are seeing drastic reductions in active cases in all states and 20 states now have less than 5,000 active cases. The recovery rate has improved from 81.8 per cent on May 3 to 95.6 per cent today. But these gains can end in a day if we become lax,” Agarwal said.
As a warning, the government added that the war on Covid is “not over”.
NITI Aayog member VK Paul said transmission was low and latent, and the state governments must adopt aggressive containment to localise the transmission.
“We also know the new variants are relatively highly transmissible and that means we have to be very cautious,” he said.
Paul, chairman of the Covid vaccination taskforce, also hailed the high efficacy of US biotechnology firm Novavax’s Covid shot as encouraging news for India.
“The pace of vaccines will pick up from next week,” Paul said hours after the government assured that adults could walk into the nearest vaccine centre and get inoculated without having to pre-register.