In past week, India has not recorded any Covid case in a fifth of its districts: Health Ministry (File)
New Delhi:
On a day when the centre declared that India has flattened its COVID-19 graph after the first wave of infections peaked in September, it flagged concern about two states — Kerala and Maharashtra.
In India, Kerala has the highest number of active cases accounting for about 42 per cent of the overall 1.7 lakh active caseload. It is followed by Maharashtra.
“The two states still have 40,000 or more active cases – Kerala with 72,000 cases and Maharashtra with 44,000 cases… Together, these states also account for 67 per cent of all (active) cases,” Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said.
Active case count, reflecting those still recovering from COVID-19, is used as a measure to check the spread of a disease.
In the past one week, India has not recorded a single coronavirus case in a fifth of its districts as its immunisation programme covered 25 lakh people with two vaccines – Covaxin and Covishield.
Though the country is battling hesitancy, India was on number 5 in global vaccination ranking, the Health Ministry said quoting data (till January 26) presented on Our World In Data.
“Data shows countries that have been vaccinating for over 50 days. India has been vaccinating for just over 11 days,” Mr Bhushan said, adding that 11 states have administered at one of the two shots to more than 35 per cent of their total healthcare workers.
“States like Odisha and Haryana have vaccinated 50 per cent of their healthcare workers,” he said listing states where immunisation target remains under 20 per cent, like Jharkhand, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand.
Currently, India is vaccinating about 4 lakh people per day, but by July the government plans to vaccinate 30 crore people and each person needs 2 doses that means vaccinating nearly 30 lakh people daily starting now.
Rajesh Bhushan added that the government is engaging with private players to ensure vaccine coverage for its entire population, but did not give a timeline.
India has 1.07 crore cases of coronavirus — highest in the world after USA – with 1.53 lakh deaths.
(With input from Agencies)