Passengers await their turn to be tested for COVID-19.
The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said two states are of grave concern, that have shown a recent surge in cases — Maharashtra, which reported more than 28,000 cases in the last 24 hours and Punjab, which is reporting a huge number of cases in proportion to its population. Besides them, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are of concern too.
Gujarat reporting around 1700 cases daily and MP around 1500 cases. Most cases in Gujarat concentrated in Surat, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot and Bhavnagar. In MP, it's concentrated in Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur, Ujjain and Betul, health secretary.
Moreover, 10 districts where maximum active cases are concentrated include — Pune, Nagpur, Mumbai, Thane, Nashik, Aurangabad, Bengaluru Urban, Nanded, Jalgaon and Akola. Nine districts from Maharashtra and one from Karnataka, Rajesh Bhushan said.
Meanwhile, a total of 771 variants of concerns (VOCs) have been detected in a total of 10,787 positive samples shared by the states and union territories, Health Ministry said today.
These include 736 samples positive for viruses of the UK (B.1.1.7) lineage, 34 samples of the South African (B.1.351) lineage and one sample of the Brazilian (P.1) lineage.
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"Though VOCs and a new double mutant variant have been found in India, these have not been detected in numbers sufficient to either establish or direct relationship or explain the rapid increase in cases in some states," the Health Ministry said.
The samples with these VOCs have been identified in 18 states, the Ministry said.
The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG), a grouping of 10 National Laboratories, has been carrying out genomic sequencing and analysis of circulating Covid-19 viruses, and correlating epidemiological trends with genomic variants.
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