Nearly 69 per cent of India's COVID-19 cases are limited to only eight states, Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary of Union Health Ministry said today.
The country has reported over 2,63,000 daily cases in the last 24 hours. There has been a decrease of 27% from the highest peak of single-day cases India noted on May 7 (4,14,000), Lav Agarwal said.
He also added that "country's weekly average case positivity rate is 16.9%." "Case positivity rate in India is 14.10% and more than 15% positivity rate in 22 states," he said.
Describing state and district officials as "field commanders" in the fight against COVID-19, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said localised containment zones, aggressive testing, and sharing correct and complete information with people are weapons to defeat the pandemic.
Interacting with them at a meeting, which was attended by district magistrates from 46 districts across nine states, through video-conferencing, PM Modi said they were free to innovate to suit their local requirements and asked them to share their feedback about any change in policy without any inhibition.
Asserting that vaccination is a strong way to fight COVID-19, PM Modi said myths about it have to be collectively rooted out.
He added that continuous efforts are being made to ramp up COVID-19 vaccine supply in a big way, asserting that attempts are on to provide states a 15-day advance schedule of the programme as it will allow them to prepare accordingly.
Testing, tracking, treatment, and COVID appropriate behaviour are some of the key things required to check the spread of the virus, PM Modi said.
Hailing officials, the prime minister said many of them worked despite being COVID-19 positive while some lost their family members but they gave duty foremost priority.
He said a lot of attention has to be paid to rural and remote areas during the second wave of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, India's COVID-19 death count climbed to 2,78,719 with a record 4,329 fresh fatalities, while the single-day rise in coronavirus cases stood at 2.63 lakh, the lowest in 28 days, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Tuesday.
The country reported 2,63,533 new cases in a span of 24 hours, taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 2,52,28,996, the data updated at 8 am showed.
A total of 2,59,170 cases were reported in a span of 24 hours on April 20.
The active cases further reduced to 33,53,765 comprising 13.29 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has improved to 85.60 per cent, the data updated at 8 am showed.
