Covid entering endemic stage in India, cases likely to subside after 10 days

Covid-19 in India is moving towards the endemic stage and the number of daily cases will rise for the next days but will start reducing thereafter, PTI reported citing sources.

Even though cases are increasing, hospitalisation is low and the current rise in cases is due to XBB.1.16 variant which is a Sub-variant of Omicron, the official sources told the news agency.

While Omicron and its sub-lineages continue to be the dominant variant, most of the assigned variants have little or no significant transmissibility, disease severity or immune escape.

The prevalence of XBB.1.16 increased from 21.6% in February this year to 35.8% in March.

However, no evidence of an increase in hospitalisation or mortality has been reported, official sources said.

On the other hand, India on Wednesday recorded 7,830 new coronavirus infections, the highest single-day spike in 7 months.

The active cases increased to 40,215, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday.

The death toll has increased to 5,31,016 with 16 new fatalities being reported - two each in Delhi, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, and one each in Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, and five reconciled by Kerala - the data updated at 8 am stated.

The active cases now comprise 0.09 per cent of the total infections and the national COVID-19 recovery rate has been recorded at 98.72 per cent, the ministry said.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,42,04,771 and the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.19 per cent.