New Delhi: Maharashtra is in the beginning of the second COVID-19 wave, a central team report has said, highlighting that there is very limited active effort to track, test, isolate cases and quarantine contacts, and there is no adherence to Covid appropriate behaviour among people in rural and urban areas.
India, meanwhile, recorded 24,492 new COVID-19 cases, registering more than 20,000 cases for the sixth day in a row, taking the infection tally past 1.14 crore, the Union Health ministry said on Tuesday.
The total cases in the country rose to 1,14,09,831, while the death toll increased to 1,58,856, with 131 fresh fatalities, the ministry data updated at 8 am showed.
Based on the central team report, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan has written a letter to the Maharashtra government, stating "measures such as night curfews, weekend lockdowns etc. have very limited impact on containing/suppressing the transmission" and urged the state to focus on strict containment strategies, strengthening surveillance and augmenting testing.
In a letter to Maharashtra Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte, Bhushan said even though the health infrastructure is adequate as of now, the "state should plan for a worse-case scenario with sufficient lead time".
The central team which visited the state from March 7-11 inferred in its report that the administrative mechanism should be re-instated to the level witnessed in August-September 2020 to contain/suppress Covid transmission.
"ln all the districts visited by the central team, the test positivity rate was high, ranging from 51 per cent in Mumbai to 30 per cent in Aurangabad, implying that there are lot many cases that are not being tested and there is high transmission in the community," the report underlined. "The absence of rigorous tracing, testing and containment is leading to sustained community transmission," it said.
"The case-contact ratio is more than 1:20. Though it appears high, a deep dive into the methodology of contact tracing revealed that the main concept of contact tracing was not clearly understood by field-level staff, who were mainly listing the immediate family and neighbourhood contacts, for the sake of listing.
"The high-risk contacts in workplace settings, social settings and family settings were not investigated and listed," the report highlighted.
Maharashtra Health minister Rajesh Tope has demanded 2.20 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses from the Centre for the ongoing inoculation drive in the state.
He requested the Centre to supply 20 lakh doses per week to the state, as per a letter dated March 15 written to the Union Health minister by Tope, who went to Delhi on Tuesday.
The Madhya Pradesh government on Tuesday, on the other hand, decided to impose a night curfew in Bhopal and Indore municipal areas and also ordered the closure of shops at 10 pm in eight other cities.
The restrictions would come into force from Wednesday, an official said. The night curfew will be in place in Indore and Bhopal cities from 10 pm to 6 am, an order issued by Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Dr Rajesh Rajora said.
Essential services such as medical shops, ration shops and eateries will be exempted from the curfew. Passengers arriving from outside by flight, train or bus will be allowed to travel to their destination even after 10 pm.
Shops will remain closed in Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Gwalior, Ujjain, Ratlam, Chhindwara, Burhanpur, Betul and Khargone cities (which are also district headquarters) from 10 pm to 6 am. No public events will be allowed on the occasion of Holi.
Permission of the district administration in these 10 districts is mandatory if more than 100 persons are expected to take part in any social, educational, political, religious, sports, entertainment or cultural program.
Thermal screening and one-week isolation for those coming from neighbouring Maharashtra will continue.
The Gujarat government on Tuesday decided to increase the night curfew timings in four major cities of the state by two hours. The curfew will now remain in force in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot from 10 pm to 6 am, an official statement said. The curfew timings earlier were from 12 am to 6 am.With agency inputs