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The Union Health Ministry has said that the Delta Plus strain detected in Maharashtra, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh is a Variant of Concern, and asked the States to take up immediate containment measures, enhanced testing, tracking and vaccination in districts and clusters where the latest variant is found.
It has also said that adequate samples of positive persons be promptly sent to the designated laboratories of INSACOG so that clinical epidemiological correlations can be made.
There are 22 cases of the Delta Plus variant in India, of which, 16 cases are in Ratnagiri and Jalgaon districts of Maharashtra, while the remaining are being reported from Kerala and Madhya Pradesh, said Rajesh Bhushan, Health Secretary, during a media briefing here on Tuesday.
“The Health Ministry has issued an advisory to these States. We don’t want it to assume significance and become a huge concern. None of the variants can pierce the masks.
“So, increase in testing, avoiding inter-mingling, and adopting Covid-appropriate behavior are important to prevent it from spreading,” Bhushan added.
Effect of vaccines
While the Delta variant is a variant of concern and is found in 80 countries, Delta Plus is present in 9 countries – US, UK, Portugal, Japan, Poland, China, Russia, Nepal and India – he further stated.
Speaking on the effectiveness of the vaccines against these Delta variants, Bhushan said both the vaccines – Covishield and Covaxin – are effective against the Delta variant and the Ministry will soon come out with the details. However, he said nothing can be said about Sputnik at this juncture as it is very new in the country. India reported less than 50,000 Covid cases at 42,640 on Tuesday after three months, with daily casualties at 1,167 aggregating to 3,89,302 deaths so far. Cumulatively, India reported 2,99,77,861 cases, of which, the active caseload stood at 6,62,521 and recovery cases were at 2,89,26,038, according to the Health Ministry data.
Recovery rates
According to the Ministry, 81,839 patients recovered in the last 24 hours till Tuesday morning. The daily recoveries continued to outnumber the daily fresh cases for 40 consecutive days, and the recovery rate further went up to 96.49 per cent.
In addition, the weekly positivity rate was at 3.21 per cent, while the daily positivity rate stood at 2.56 per cent, less than 5 per cent for 15 straight days. Also, the country conducted 16,64,360 tests on Monday, taking the cumulative tests so far to 39.40 crore.
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