India's Covid positivity rate declining, says Health Secretary

The Health Ministry on Tuesday said that India's cumulative positivity rate is on decline as mapped in the daily and weekly trend. The cumulative positivity rate is 5.19%. This is declining continuously. Positivity rate — cumulative as well as weekly and daily — is declining across the country," health ministry secretary Rajesh Bhushan said. "The active cases continue to be less than 1.50 lakh. If you look at the average of deaths taking place daily, it was 92 last week- a trend of less than 100 deaths," Bhushan said in a press briefing in New Delhi. 

"There are still 2 states that have 75% active cases -Kerala and Maharashtra. Kerala has 38% of the total active cases of the country while Maharashtra has 37% of the total active cases" he said and added that Karnataka has 4% and Tamil Nadu has 2.78% active cases. India has 194 people infected with three known strains first found in the UK, South Africa and Brazil, he said. Bhushan also said that India has inoculated at least 1.17 crore people — 1.04 crore have been administered first dose and 12.61 lakh second dose — across the country.

A total of 187 individuals have been reported infected with UK strain, six people with South African strain and one with Brazilian strain till date," Dr VK Paul, NITI Aayog's health member said. He added that the two variants have been found in India's three states."There are two variants in Maharashtra being talked about - N440 K variant and E484 K variant. These variants have been reported in Maharashtra, Kerala and Telangana," Paul said. The Covid-19 variants reported from other countries are not responsible for surge in Kerala and Maharashtra's tally.