In the wake of a surge in Covid-19 infections in the country in recent weeks, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will on Friday chair a high-level review meeting with the core team of experts, according to official sources.
The core team includes AIIMS director Dr Randip Guleria, ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava, and NCDC director Sujeet Singh. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary of Department of Biotechnology Rajesh S Gokhale, Secretary in the Department of Pharmaceuticals S Aparna, among others, will also attend the meeting.
As of Wednesday, 10 states have over 1,000 active cases. These states are Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, and Gujarat.
Sources say that across India, 43 districts are reporting a weekly and daily Covid-19 positivity rate of over 10 per cent. These districts include 11 from Kerala, six from Mizoram, and five from Maharashtra. The weekly positivity rate is in the 5-10 per cent range 42 Indian districts, which include eight from Rajasthan, five from Delhi, and four from Tamil Nadu.
In a review meeting of INSACOG held last week, states and union territories were asked to submit "larger number" of samples for whole genome sequencing from districts and areas which had seen a surge in Covid-19 cases over a period of seven days. The direction was issued to check the possibility of any new emerging variant or sub-variant and ascertain the reasons behind the breakthrough infections.
Omicron and its sublineages, primarily BA. 2 and BA.2.38, as of now, seem to be behind the current rise in Covid cases, an official source said citing experts from the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG).
The BA.2 and its sublineages constitute over 85 per cent of the cases with BA.2.38 being found in around 33 per cent of the samples. The percentage of BA.4 and BA.5 is found in less than 10 per cent samples, the source said.
"The last review meeting stated that there is no variant of concern in the country as of now. India now has BA.4 and BA.5 in addition to BA.2 which have slightly higher transmissibility as compared to other Omicron sublineages," the official said.
While there has been a rise in cases, there has not been a proportionate rise in number of hospitalisations and deaths, said AIIMS Director Dr. Randeep Guleria said earlier this month.
He added, "So the rise in the number of cases is not a cause of worry at the moment. But we should not let our guard down and must focus on aggressive testing so as not to miss out on any emerging variant."
Experts have flagged increased mobility due to the summer holidays, easing of travel restrictions both nationally and internationally, and full-fledged opening up of economic activities for the spread of infection among vulnerable individuals.
(With PTI inputs)
