Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will on Friday chair a high-level evaluation assembly with the core crew of consultants over growing instances of COVID-19 within the nation, official sources mentioned.
India has been witnessing a rise in coronavirus infections during the last couple of weeks.
As on date, 10 states — Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Gujarat — have over 1,000 lively instances.
The core crew of consultants will embody AIIMS director Dr Randip Guleria, ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava and NCDC director Sujeet Singh.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary of Department of Biotechnology Rajesh S Gokhale, Secretary within the Department of Pharmaceuticals S Aparna, amongst others, may even attend the assembly.
In a evaluation assembly of INSACOG held final week, states/UTs have been requested to submit “larger number” of samples for entire genome sequencing from districts and areas which had seen a surge in COVID-19 instances over a interval of seven days.
The path was issued to verify the potential for any new rising variant or sub-variant and confirm the explanations behind the breakthrough infections.
According to the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) consultants, Omicron and its sublineages, primarily BA. 2 and BA.2.38, as of now, appear to be behind the present rise in Covid instances, an official supply mentioned.
The BA.2 and its sublineages represent over 85 per cent of the instances with BA.2.38 being present in round 33 per cent of the samples.
The proportion of BA.4 and BA.5 is present in lower than 10 per cent samples, the supply mentioned.
“The last review meeting stated that there is no variant of concern in the country as of now. India now has BA.4 and BA.5 in addition to BA.2 which have slightly higher transmissibility as compared to other Omicron sublineages,” the official mentioned.
Forty-three districts in India, together with 11 from Kerala, six from Mizoram and 5 from Maharashtra, are reporting a weekly Covid positivity fee of greater than 10 per cent. In 42 districts, together with eight from Rajasthan, 5 from Delhi and 4 from Tamil Nadu, the weekly positivity is between 5 and 10 per cent, sources mentioned.
A complete of 12,249 new coronavirus infections have been reported in a day, taking India’s an infection tally to 4,33,31,645, whereas the lively instances have elevated to 81,687, in accordance with the Union well being ministry information up to date on Wednesday.
The dying toll has climbed to five,24,903 with 13 new fatalities, the information up to date at 8 am acknowledged.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”