Centre tells states to conduct Covid mock drills in hospitals as cases rise

As Covid cases across the country went past 6,000 on Friday, the highest in 203 days, the Union health ministry has asked the states to stay alert, be prepared, and avoid panic. 

In a review meeting held by Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, states were also told to conduct mock drills to demonstrate and strengthen their preparedness across all health facilities on April 10 and 11 in the case of a further spurt in cases. 

Eight states are reporting a high number of Covid cases with over 10 districts in Kerala, Maharashtra and Delhi reporting a positivity rate of over 10 per cent. 

India has been witnessing a steady increase in Covid cases with average daily cases rising to 4,188 in the week ended April 7, from 571 in the week ended March 17. There were 29,318 cases detected during the week ended April 7, compared to 15,119 cases in the week ending 31 March. The weekly positivity rate stands at 3.02 per cent. 

The number of Covid-19 cases has risen from just over 3,000 at the end of March to 6,050 as of April 7. The number of cases on April 7 was the highest since September. 

The previous high of 6,298, was detected on September 16. The latest figure is a rise of 93.9 per cent over the previous week. The data considered numbers available with the World Health Organisation (WHO), and used the health ministry data where this was unavailable for recent days.

The number of weekly cases were around 38,000 for the seven days ending September 16, declining from around 42,000 in the previous week. 

The review meeting was attended by various state health ministers who were asked to review preparedness of their district administration and public health officials on Saturday and Sunday. 

“Centre and states need to continue working in a collaborative spirit as they did during the previous waves,” Mandaviya said. 

The health ministry said Omicron and its sub-lineages continue to be the predominant variant, adding that most of the assigned variants have little or no significant transmissibility, disease severity or immune escape. 

Fighting Covid

• States told to identify emergency hotspots, ramp up testing and vaccination, and ensure readiness of hospital infra
• States advised to stay alert and keep all preparedness for Covid-19 management
• Test, track, treat, vaccinate, and adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour to remain the policy focus

“The prevalence of XBB.1.16 increased from 21.6 per cent in February to 35.8 per cent in March, 2023. However, no evidence of an increase in hospitalisation or mortality has been reported,” a statement by the health ministry said. 

The health ministry, taking note of the low coverage of precaution dose, asked the states to ramp up vaccination of all eligible population, especially of the elderly and vulnerable population group.

Mandaviya asked all the state health ministers to personally monitor and review the preparedness of all logistics and infrastructure, including availability of sufficient designated hospital beds and ensure that there is adequate stock of essential medicines. He also asked states to regularly update their Covid data on the COVID India Portal. 

The health ministry called for expeditiously increasing the rate of testing and the share of RT-PCR in overall tests in 23 states where the testing level was found to be below the national average. At the current rate, India is conducting 100 tests per million, according to the health ministry. A total of 1,78,533 tests were conducted in the country on Thursday. 

States were also asked to identify emerging hotspots by monitoring trends of influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) cases, and sending sufficient samples for testing of Covid-19 and influenza.

The review meeting was attended by the health ministers of Assam, Delhi, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Jharkhand and Goa among others.