States and UTs with rising transmission

A majority of India’s south and the northeast, meanwhile, is at the other end of the spectrum. In Meghalaya, the positivity rate rose from 11.1% to 17.7% between May 7 and May 17 – a rise of 6.7 percentage points, the highest in India. It was followed by Andhra Pradesh, where positivity rate jumped from 18.7% to 24.4% (up 5.8 percentage points), and Tamil Nadu (from 15.2% to 19.8%, up 4.7 percentage points). Manipur (14.2% to 18.3%) and Karnataka (28.4% to 32.4%) both saw positivity rate go up 4.1 percentage points. Sikkim and Karnataka registered the second and third highest positivity rate in the past week – 32.6% and 32.4% respectively. Sikkim has seen the sixth highest rise in positivity rate in the past 10 days – of 3.4 percentage points.

Other states with high positivity rate (and rising) are Kerala (up 0.4 percentage points to 26.9%) and Odisha (up 0.4% to 20.9%). One state and two UTs – Mizoram, Lakshadweep and Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli – were excluded from the analysis due to unavailability of consistent testing data.

During health ministry’s weekly Covid-19 briefing on Tuesday, Niti Aayog member (health) VK Paul said, “We have to be very mindful that when we are achieving declining positivity rate it is because of the results of what we are doing and that cannot be slackened. We cannot again let this go out of hand again.” “In many states the pandemic curve is stabilising, as a result of comprehensive efforts at containment, at testing, restrictions, and all the other efforts that people of those states are carrying out -the states such as Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and so on,” he said.

He added that there were still a few states where there continues to be concern such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, among others. “It is a mixed picture but there is overall stabilisation, and what we know from scientific analysis that the reproduction number (R0) is overall below 1 now,” said Paul.

Experts, however, say it is too early to let the guard down.