Effects of polls, Durga Puja, Diwali on Covid may be seen in coming weeks: Govt
Live MintThe Union Health Ministry on Tuesday in its routine briefing on the country's Covid-19 situation said that over 12.65 crore covid tests have been conducted so far and the cumulative positivity rate has come down to 7.01%. A decision has also been taken to increase house to house surveillance of active cases in containment zones and other vulnerable pockets for which 7,000-8,000 teams will be put on this exercise, a hike from the existing 3,000 teams that are currently involved, said NITI Aayog's V K Paul. Bhushan also added that Delhi was testing very less in June at around 5,776 tests per day and that number rose to over 50,000 in September which after that plateaud out and the recent spike of COVID cases may be because many positive cases escaped the net. "In the last two days decision of urgent actions taken by the government included an increase in overall beds, including ICU beds, doubling testing to 1-1.2 lakh per day; right mix of RTPCR and antigen tests, strengthening and augmenting home care support, mobilising doctors and nurses, enforcing quarantine of contacts, containment zone SOPs and COVID appropriate behaviour," he said. Meanwhile, India's daily coronavirus cases tally continued to dip further as only 29,164 new infections were reported in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Tuesday.