India reported a single-day rise of more than 17,000 fresh Covid-19 cases on Friday after a gap of over four months (124 days), recording a 30 per cent jump in daily cases, according to the Union Health Ministry. A total 17,336 coronavirus cases were reported in a span of 24 hours.
The daily positivity rate was recorded at 4.32 per cent and the weekly positivity rate at 3.07 per cent, according to the ministry. The count of active cases has increased to 88,284, comprising 0.20 per cent of the total infections, while the national Covid-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.59 per cent, it said.
Maharashtra on Thursday reported 5,218 new coronavirus infections – a 60 percent rise compared to previous day’s cases. The highest 4,166 cases were reported from the Mumbai circle that includes the entire Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
Mumbai city, where the lone death of Thursday was also reported from, accounted for nearly half of the cases (2,479) on Thursday. Pune circle reported 665 cases, Nagpur circle 135, Kolhapur circle 72, Akola circle 63, Nashik 62, Latur 31 and Aurangabad circle 24.
The state’s positivity rate (cases found per 100 tests) was at a whopping 9.31 per cent. The number of active cases rose to 24,867.
State health officials, however, are not worried about the spike in Covid-19 cases, as per a Times of India report, which quoted state surveillance officer Dr Pradip Awate as saying that the rise included some backlog numbers. “The ICMR portal was not functional for over 24 hours and the BMC data team was unable to update the tally. Thursday’s cases include some old cases as a result,” Awate told TOI.
Thursday’s spike came after a dip on the previous day when Maharashtra logged 3,260 cases and three deaths while Mumbai’s tally was 50% lower at 1,648 cases.
A civic official noted that these daily fluctuations don’t hold as much significance as weekly trends for gauging the severity of Covid spread. “If at the end of the week, we have a lower tally than last week’s caseload, it can be said that the present surge is plateauing,” he said.
Although over 4,000 Covid cases have been reported in the past fortnight, most of them have been asymptomatic and a large number of patients are in home isolation.
Family members reinfected with Covid in last 6 months
A health NGO has conducted a survey to understand the spread of the COVID-19 infection, and it claimed that of the total number of people who took part in the exercise, 18 per cent citizens have had one or more individuals in the family who got reinfected with the virus in the last six months.
NGO LocalCircles said the first question in the survey was, “How many individuals in your family (including yourself) do you have who have been infected with COVID-19 twice in the last 180 days?”
This question received 12,381 responses, the NGO said, out of which two per cent said “five or more individuals” in their families got reinfected with Covid in the last six months. And, 8 per cent of them said, “two-four individuals” in their families got reinfected with Covid in the last six months, and another 8 per cent said, “one individual” was infected in this period.
On an aggregate basis, 18 per cent citizens of the people surveyed had one or more individuals in their families who got reinfected with in the last six months, the NGO claimed in a statement.
In response to another question, 45 per cent of those surveyed said they got reinfected “weeks after the original infection”, while for 27 per cent, it was six months apart, the statement said. This question received 11,604 responses.
The final question in the study asked citizens, “The individuals in your family (including yourself) who got infected by Covid twice or thrice in the last 180 days, how were their infections and associated symptoms”, 46 per cent on an average responded that their infection contracted the second time was “more severe” than the first one. This question received 11,106 responses.
The survey received more than 35,000 responses overall from citizens across several districts in India, and 67 per cent of the respondents were men, while 33 per cent were women.
As many as 42 per cent respondents were from metro or tier-1 districts, 35 per cent from tier-2, while 23 per cent were from tier-3 and tier-4 and rural districts, it said.
(With PTI inputs)
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