In India, the active COVID-19 cases have declined for three straight days for the 1st time since early March as the country is close to reaching the peak of the devastating 2nd wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Though, deaths from the COVID-19 rose again on Tuesday to 4,205, the highest daily count recorded in the country till now. The earlier highest number of deaths was 4,187 that were reported on Friday. The total death count from this pandemic in India has crossed 2.5 lakh, as the country recorded nearly 50,000 deaths in the last 14 days.

The daily case tally remained below 3.5 lakh for the 2nd consecutive day with 3,48,371 new cases reported. Active cases dropped marginally by 4,000 and settled at 3.71 lakh. The daily count in Maharashtra rose to 793 cases after staying below 600 for 2 days. Nine states and Union territories reported their highest deaths in a single day. Even Tamil Nadu reported fatalities to 298 from an earlier peak of 241 deaths.

The government said that the overall tendency of new cases was better, from 6th May 6 when India reported 4,14,188 new cases, to 7th May when the cases dropped down to 4,01,078 cases, and on 8th May it reported 4,03,738 and on 9th May cases dropped to 3,66,161 and on 10th May 3,29,942 cases were reported.

States such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, West Bengal, Punjab and Goa have reported an increase in daily cases. 26 states have more than 15% positivity rate, out of which 9 states are in the 25% plus positivity rate, indicating the necessity to continue with containment and various methods of lockdowns.

The Centre said that it was in continual discussion with these states for taking strict measures. The government said that there is a necessity to monitor the movements at the district level because even though states are showing an overall plateauing, few districts are showing a continuous surge in cases.

The national positivity rate is almost 21% and around 42% (310/734) of the districts who are reporting a positivity rate above the national average.

Source: ET Healthworld