New Delhi: For the past few days, India is witnessing an upsurge in COVID cases with the Union Health Ministry on Thursday saying that the country has registered 7,240 fresh Covid cases in the last 24 hours, up from 5,233 infections logged the previous day.
Among other states, Maharashtra reported 2,701 fresh cases, its highest infection count since January 25, while Kerala reported 2,271 new cases in the last 24 hours. The national capital reported 564 cases.
Omicron sub-variants main reason
In the wake of these developments, the health experts on Thursday said Omicron sub-variants are behind the spike in Covid caseload.
Even as the cases are rising sharply, the doctors are calling them mild, noting that the symptoms resolve within 2-3 days, and require no hospitalisation.
Vaccination main reason for low severity
“I have observed that the recent Covid positive patients are getting better in 48 to 72 hours. Nobody has required any Remdesivir or immunotherapy. Patients are not having major complications,” Manjusha Agarwal, Senior Consultant-Internal Medicine at Global Hospital, Mumbai, told IANS. However, Dr Agarwal credited vaccination to be the reason for low severity.
Satish Koul, Director, Internal Medicine, Fortis Memorial Research Institute, told IANS that he is seeing patients with Covid symptoms in OPD on a regular basis.
“The sub-variant is “demonstrating immune escape, meaning it’s evading vaccine induced immunity and immunity gained with previous Covid-19 infection”, he added.
According to Sushila Kataria, Senior Director, Internal Medicine, Medanta Hospital, Gurugram, the new cases are “of Omicron lineage, possibly the BA.2 variant”.
“If you wear a mask and follow all the Covid protocols, it will help you to not fall sick. People should follow the protocols even if the government has not made them mandatory,” the doctors said.
Centre issues guidelines for states
Earlier in the day, the Health Ministry advised all states and UTs not to lower the guard and to continue working towards building on progress made so far. “The States/UTs must not lower their guard and continue working towards building on progress made thus far to bring pandemic situation under control,” the health ministry said in the letter to all states.
“In past two weeks, an upsurge in cases have been noticed. In the week ending 8th June, 2022, 4,207 average daily new cases were reported as compared to 2,663 average daily cases in the week ending 1st June, 2022. There has also been an increase in the weekly positivity rate from 0.63 per cent (week ending 1st June, 2022) to 1.12 per cent (week ending 8th June, 2022)”, said Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan in the letter.
He said that the States/UTs are advised to continue implementation and monitoring of necessary measures for prompt and effective management of Covid-19 and to ensure compliance with various advisories issued by this Ministry.
What is five-fold strategy?
Moreover, the states have also been advised to follow five-fold strategy of Test-Track-Treat Vaccine and Covid Appropriate Behaviour and enforcement be monitored regularly.
The Centre has also asked for genome Sequencing of prescribed samples of international passengers as well as collection of samples from Sentinel Sites and local cluster of new Covid-19 cases is equally important.
