86.25% new Covid-19 cases in six states including Punjab: Health Ministry

Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu are the six states that cumulatively account for 86.25 per cent of the new coronavirus cases reported in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

Maharashtra has reported the highest daily new cases at 11,141, followed by Kerala with 2,100 and Punjab with 1,043 new infections, the ministry said.

The Centre is regularly holding high-level review meetings with the states and Union territories showing a surge in new daily cases and the health secretary is also holding weekly review meetings, it said.

"Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu have been reporting a surge in the COVID daily new cases. They cumulatively account for 86.25 per cent of the new cases reported in the past 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement.

The Centre has recently rushed high-level public health teams to Maharashtra and Punjab to assist in COVID-19 control and containment measures in view of the recent spike in cases, it added.

The central government said it had already deputed high-level teams to Maharashtra, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Jammu and Kashmir to support them in their fight against the recent spike in COVID-19 cases.

"These teams interact with the state/UT authorities and get a firsthand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove bottlenecks, if any," the ministry said.

It said eight states and Union territories -- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka and Haryana -- were displaying an upward trajectory in daily new cases.

They have a weekly positivity rate more than the national average of 2.29 per cent. Maharashtra has the highest weekly positivity rate with 11.13 per cent, the government said.

The number of active cases in the country reached 1,88,747 on Monday and it is 1.68 per cent of the total infections.

Meanwhile, 18 states and Union territories have not reported any COVID-19 deaths in the last 24 hours.

These are Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Sikkim and Tripura.

The ministry said that nearly 2.10 crore vaccine doses had been administered through 3,76,633 sessions, as per the provisional report till 7 am on Monday.

These include 69,85,911 healthcare workers (first dose), 35,47,548 healthcare workers (second dose), 66,09,537 frontline workers (first dose) and 2,13,559 frontline workers (second dose), 4,80,661 beneficiaries aged more than 45 years with specific comorbidities (first dose) and 31,51,794 beneficiaries aged more than 60 years.