Covid upsurge: Centre asks States, UTs to remain battle-ready

As India recorded over 6,000 new Covid-19 cases after a gap of six months, the Union Health Ministry has asked all the States and Union territories (UTs) to stay alert and remain prepared for Covid management.

While reviewing the Covid situation in the country on Friday, Union Health Minister Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya asked the States and the UTs to identify emergency hotspots, ramp up testing and ensure hospital infrastructure readiness in their respective provinces.

Key takeaways of the meeting

• Dr. Mandaviya advised the States and UTs to be on the alert and keep all preparedness for COVID19 management.
• He urged them to conduct mock drills of all hospital infrastructure on 10 and 11 April 2023 and review the health preparedness with district administrations and health officials on 8 and 9 April 2023.
• Mandaviya also urged them to identify emerging hotspots by monitoring trends of ILI/SARI cases and sending sufficient samples for testing of Covid-19 and Influenza; and ramping up whole genome sequencing of positive samples.
• The Minister said that irrespective of the new Covid variants, the five-fold strategy of 'Test-Track-Treat-Vaccinate-Adherence to Covid-Appropriate Behaviour' continue to remain the tested strategy for Covid management.
• The States and UTs were also requested to expeditiously increase the rate of testing from the current rate of 100 tests per million, as on week ending 7 April, 2023. They were advised to increase the share of RT-PCR in tests.
• They were further informed that currently WHO is closely tracking one variant of interest (VOI), XBB.1.5 and six other variants are under monitoring (BQ.1, BA.2.75, CH.1.1, XBB, XBF and XBB.1.16).
• It was highlighted in the meeting that while Omicron and its sub-lineages continue to be the predominant 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 Feb to 35.8% in March, 2023. However, no evidence of an increase in hospitalization or mortality has been reported.
• It was also informed that while India has achieved over 90% coverage of primary vaccination, the coverage of precaution dose is very low.
• Union Health Minister advised States/UTs to ramp up vaccination of all eligible population, especially of the elderly and vulnerable population group.
• It was also observed that eight States are reporting high number of Covid cases in India with 10 or more districts reporting more than 10% positivity in Kerala, Maharashtra and Delhi and over 5 districts reporting more than 5% positivity in the States of Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Haryana.