NEW DELHI: Although health experts haven’t rung the alarm yet on another Covid wave, the rise in cases across the country is unmistakable. With more than 15,700 cases, the number of new patients in India nearly doubled over the last week as compared to the previous week.
The rise was seen around three weeks ago after a gradual decline in cases over 11 weeks. Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of cases, with the national capital region accounting for a majority of the cases. The spike in Covid cases was first seen only in these states. Last week, nine more states, including Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Punjab, and Karnataka reported a significant rise in cases.
Over the last week, the national capital saw over 6,300 cases, which was nearly three times that recorded a week ago. The Omicron variant of coronavirus and its sub-types are driving the surge in Delhi, government sources said last week. Samples showed the presence of BA.2.12.1 and eight other subtypes of Omicron. The findings were arrived at after studying genome sequencing of samples.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in February had said that the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron is more transmissible than the BA.1 strain. However, there was no cause for alarm as it was no more severe than the original strain, it said.
Although cases have increased, fatalities are still under control and there has been no noticeable increase in Covid-related deaths. Apart from Kerala (that is sending data to the Centre only), India recorded 27 deaths last week, which was the same as in the previous week.
After reporting 996 cases last week, Maharashtra saw a 48% rise in cases over the previous week while Karnataka and Bengal registered spikes of 71% and 66% respectively.
The number of active cases as of Sunday, April 24, was reported at 15,873, while the number of reported Covid fatalities rose by 44 in 24 hours to 5,22,193. The total vaccination count stood at over 187 crore.
On Monday, April 25, India reported 2,541 new Covid-19 patients, taking the active case count to 16,522. The daily positivity rate stands at 0.84%.
