Even as cases are fast spreading like wildfire in India to touch to 8 lakh mark, making it the third-worst hit nation in the world , the Centre on Thursday said India has not yet reached the community transmission stage of Covid and asserted that there have been localised outbreaks in some geographical areas.
The Government pointed out that eight states, including Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Karnataka and Telangana, account for around 90 per cent of the active Covid-19 cases in the country and 80 per cent of the active cases have been reported from 49 districts.
Similarly, six states — Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal — account for 86 per cent of the deaths caused by COVID-19 and 32 districts account for 80 per cent of such fatalities, the Union Health Ministry said. The death toll in India has climbed to 21,129.
Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said that there is no community transmission in India. “During our discussions today, experts again stated that there is no community transmission in India. There may be some localised pockets where transmission is high but as a country, there’s no community transmission,” the Minister said while addressing a press conference after chairing a Group of Ministers’ meeting to review, monitor and evaluate the evolving situation on Covid-19 in the country.
Noting that though India has become the third most affected country by the Covid-19 pandemic, he asserted it was important to understand this in the correct perspective.
“We are a country with the second highest population in the world. Our cases per million are 538, while world average is 1,453,” Vardhan said.
Later in the day at a presser here, Health Ministry’s OSD Rajesh Bhushan too asserted that there was no need to worry for India which has managed well and healthcare is not unduly burdened.
“When we talk of caseload of Covid-19 in India, it is 2,69,000 people. This tells us that at the end of the day we've managed a situation where our health care infrastructure is not unduly burdened and is not creaking due to the pressure,” he said. Today, we have 538 cases per million population, it's as per WHO situation report. Case per million population in some countries are at least 16-17 times more than what it is in India. We have 15 deaths per million population whereas we have countries where it is 40 times as much, the official added.
ICMR on its parts said that the number of tests has increased, on an average, we are testing more than 2.6 Lakhs of samples per day. We hope to see a further rise by the use of the antigen test, said an official from the ICMR.
