INDIA LOGS 38,667 NEW COVID-19 CASES, POSITIVITY RATE AT 1.73% With 5 deaths, 66 Delta Plus cases, Maharashtra on edge

NEW DELHI: India reported 38,667 new Covid-19 cases, taking the infection tally to 3,21,56,493, and the daily positivity rate to 1,73 per cent, informed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday. A decrease of 1,453 daily new cases has been recorded in a span of 24 hours. With this, the daily positivity rate remained less than 3 per cent for the last 19 days and the weekly positivity rate currently stands at 2.05 per cent. The active cases have declined to 3,87,673 which comprise 1.21 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate is at 97.45 per cent. As per the health ministry, 3,13,38,088 patients have already recovered from Covid-19 with 35,743 recovering in the last 24 hours. With 478 new deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the death toll now stands at 4,30,732.

Amid relaxations and easing of curbs in Maharashtra following an ebb in the second wave, the worst Covid19-hit state in the country is now again on alert, with as many as 66 cases of the Delta Plus variant also known as Ay.1—designated as a “variant of concern” in India—and five deaths reported till Friday. Among the five fatalities, three are male, and two female. While two patients were from the Ratnagiri district, one each was from Raigad, Beed and Mumbai. As per state health department, all the deceased were above the age of 65 and had co-morbidities. With respect to vaccination, two among the five were fully vaccinated with two dosages of Covishield, while two had not taken any shot of vaccination. The department has no confirmation of whether one person had received vaccines or not.

Mumbai reported its first death due to the Delta Plus variant—a 63-year-old woman who died on 27 July tested positive on 21 July, and her results of genome sequencing arrived on Wednesday. As per officials, the woman was fully vaccinated, without any travel history and had several co-morbidities, including diabetes, and was on oxygen support and was administered steroids and Remdesivir. Apart from her, there were seven patients in the city whose reports turned out positive for mutation of the highly contagious Delta variant, the Delta Plus, including two her close contacts. BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) is tracking and tracing the other patients.

What is worrying is also the 66 reported cases of infection from the Delta Plus variant. Some of these 66 patients had taken both doses of the vaccine. Of the 66 infected, 61 have recovered, officials said. 13 cases have been reported from Jalgaon, followed by Ratnagiri with 12, Mumbai with 11 cases, six each in Pune and Thane, three each in Palghar and Raigad, two each in Gondia and Nanded and a single case each in Chandrapur, Akola, Sindhudurg, Sangli, Nandurbar, Aurangabad, Kolhapur and Beed districts. Of the 66 infected people, 33 are men, while the remaining women. The maximum number of cases have been reported in the 19-45 age group (33), followed by 4660 age group (18), above 60 years (8) and below 18 years (7). What is more concerning is that people are getting infected with the Delta plus variant, even after taking both doses of vaccine. According to the statement released by state health department, among the total patients, 34 are female. Two of these 18 people had taken Covaxin and 16 Covishield.

Of the total patients, 61 have already recovered and 31 of them showed mild or no symptoms of the infection. These cases came up in the genome sequencing investigation of samples taken from patients from different parts of the state. Genomic sequencing has been actively taken up by Indian SARSCOV-2 Genomic Consortium with a network of 28 laboratories.

In Maharashtra, every district sends 100 random samples for genome sequencing. The Maharashtra government has entered into an agreement with the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, a laboratory under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, to expedite the genetic sequencing survey.

On Wednesday, the Centre said that the Delta Plus variant has been detected in 86 cases across the country, but there is no “exponential surge” so far.