COVID: Health Secy directs states/UTs with high caseload to strengthen containment rules

On Sunday, the Union health secretary held a review meeting through video conference (VC) with the health secretaries of five States and one Union Territory on the containment and management of COVID-19 in 35 districts under their jurisdiction. It further instructed the states and UT's from were 35 districts have been reporting high active COVID-19 caseload and fatality rate to strengthen containment measures and scale-up testing to bring down the positivity rate below five percent.

The states and UT's were asked to ensure strict perimeter control, strengthen the active case search focusing on comorbid and elderly population, early identification by ramping up testing, and optional utilization of RT-PCR testing capacity to break the chain of transmission of the disease, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.

These 35 affected districts comprise four districts of West Bengal namely Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas and 24 South Parganas. There are 17 districts of Maharashtra including Pune, Nagpur, Thane, Mumbai, Mumbai Suburban, Kolhapur, Sangli, Nashik, Ahmednagar, Raigad, Jalgaon, Solapur, Satara, Palghar, Aurangabad, Dhule and Nanded. Gujarat's Surat, Puducherry's Pondicherry, Jharkhand's East Singhbhum and all 11 districts in Delhi.

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India's COVID Recovery Rate Rises To 77.32%

With a record 73,642 patients having recuperated in a day, India's COVID-19 recoveries have surged to nearly 32 lakh, pushing the recovery rate to 77.32 percent while the case fatality rate, one of the lowest globally, has further dropped to 1.72 percent as on date, the Union Health Ministry said on Sunday.

There are 8,62,320 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country accounting for only 20.96 percent of the total caseload, it highlighted.  "The spike in the daily recovered COVID-19 patients continues in the country. For the second successive day, India has clocked a record recovery of more than 70,000 patients in a single day," the ministry said.

A total of 73,642 patients have recovered and been discharged from either home or facility isolation or hospitals in a day, according to health ministry data updated at 8 am.

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