'Pandemic far from over': Govt says R-no. high in 8 states

New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday said India's reproductive number, or 'R', an indicator of how fast the Covid-19 pandemic is spreading, is more than one in eight states, including Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

An R-value above one means more than one person is being infected, on an average, by an already-infected person, and that leads to a surge in cases.

India's Covid tally climbed to 3,17,26,507 on Tuesday with 30,549 more people testing positive for the disease while the active caseload declined after six days, according to Union Health ministry data.

The Centre pointed out that in the last week, 49.85 per cent of the total Covid-19 cases registered in the country were reported from Kerala.

During a press briefing, Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Union Health ministry, said: "The R-number is high in eight states of India. Whenever this number is above one, it means that the case trajectory is increasing and it needs to be controlled. US, Canada, Australia and India have 1.2 R number on average."

Agarwal added: "There are 18 districts, including 10 districts of Kerala where an increasing trend in cases is seen. These 18 districts from six states — Kerala, Maharashtra, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh — which are contributing 47.5 per cent of the total Covid cases now. Moreover, there are 44 districts where the case positivity rate is over 10 per cent. These districts are in Kerala, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland among others. The number of cases has decreased in 222 districts. On June 1, there were 279 districts where over 100 cases were reported but this number has come down to 57 districts now."

Agarwal also said the second wave is still not over in India. A high number of cases are being reported across the world and the pandemic is far from over, he added.

Meanwhile, the death toll climbed to 4,25,195 with 422 fresh fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed.

The number of active cases came down to 4,04,958, which comprises 1.28 per cent of the total infections. The national COVID-19 recovery rate increased to 97.38 per cent, it showed.

A decrease of 8,760 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

The total number of Covid vaccine doses administered so far as part of the nationwide vaccination drive has reached 47.85 crore.