Covid in India is moving towards the endemic stage, stated official sources on Wednesday.
“Covid in India is moving towards the endemic stage. Covid will rise for the next 10 days, but cases will start reducing. Even though cases are increasing but hospitalisation is low. The current rise in cases is due to the XBB.1.16 variant which is a sub-variant of Omicron.”
“However, Omicron sub-lineages are predominant and no new Covid19 variant has been reported so far. The Omicron sub-lineages are more transmissible with less severity,” the source added.
Elaborating on the XBB.1.16 variant, the source said, “The XBB.1.16 increased from 21.6 per cent in February to 35.8 per cent in March 2023. But no evidence of an increase in hospitalization or mortality has been reported.”
Amidst a gradual spike in Covid 19 cases in several states, mock drills were undertaken on April 10 and 11 in a total of 33,685 health facilities, including 28,050 government facilities and 5,635 private health facilities.
The government facilities included government medical colleges, government hospitals, district/civil hospitals, CHCs as well as HWCs and PHCs while the private health facilities included private medical colleges, private hospitals and other private health centres.
Critical medical infrastructure and resources including oxygen beds, isolation beds, ventilators, PSA plants, LMO, Oxygen concentrators, Oxygen cylinders as well as medicines and PPE kits were assessed and medical staff were oriented on the management of Covid19 during the drills.
In preparation for the nationwide mock drill, online training with State and District Surveillance Units was also conducted on 4, 5 and 6 April 2023.
Over 7000 new Covid cases on Wednesday
New Delhi: India recorded 7,830 new cornonavirus cases on Wednesday, marking a sharp jump from yesterday when 5675 cases were reported, according to data shared by the Union Health Ministry.
The overall active caseload in the country currently stands at 40,215 with a daily positivity rate of 3.65 per cent and a weekly positivity rate of 3.83 per cent. The death count due to Covid virus has gone up to 5,31,016 with 16 new fatalities – two each in Delhi, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, and one each in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Five virus-related deaths were reconciled by Kerala, according to the health ministry data at 8 am on 12 April.
