Gross violations of Covid norms being seen across country: Govt
NEW DELHI: The government on Tuesday expressed concern over the “gross violations” of Covid-appropriate behaviour in several parts of the country and said this can nullify the gains made so far. Addressing a press conference on the pandemic situation in the country, Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry, said people talk about the third wave as a “weather update” but fail to understand that adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour or the lack of it is what will prevent or cause any future waves.
NITI Aayog Member (Health) Dr V K Paul, who was also present at the press conference, said globally, a third wave of Covid-19 is being seen and called on people to make efforts to ensure that it does not happen in India.
Agarwal said approximately 73.4 per cent of the new Covid-19 cases reported so far in July were from Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. He said 55 districts reported Covid case positivity rate of more than 10 per cent in the week ending July 13. Central teams have been deputed to Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Meghalaya, Odisha, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura to support them in Covid-19 management, he added.
India’s Covid-19 death toll climbed to 410,784 on Tuesday with 2,020 new deaths recorded after Madhya Pradesh reconciled its fatality data while 31,443 new coronavirus cases pushed the infection tally to 30,905,819, according to Union health ministry data.
Meanwhile, the ministry said that more than 1.91 crore Covid-19 vaccine doses are still available with the states, Union Territories and private hospitals to be administered.
Over 394.6 million vaccine doses have been provided to states and Union Territories so far through all sources and 1,200,000 more doses are in the pipeline.
Of this, the total consumption, including the wastage, is 3,75,538,390 doses, according to data available at 8 am on Tuesday. More than 19.1 million Covid-19 vaccine doses are still available with the states, Union Territories and private hospitals to be administered, the ministry said. The Union government is committed to accelerating the pace of Covid-19 vaccination throughout the country.
The new phase of universalisation of Covid-19 vaccination commenced from June 21.
The vaccination drive has been ramped up through availability of more vaccines, advance visibility of vaccine availability to states and UTS for enabling better planning by them, and streamlining the vaccine supply chain, the ministry said.
As part of the nationwide vaccination drive, the central government has been supporting the states and UTS by providing them Covid vaccines free of cost. In the new phase of the vaccination drive, the Centre will procure and supply (free of cost) 75 per cent of the vaccines being produced by the vaccine manufacturers in the country, the ministry said.