India reports over 10,000 Covid cases for 5th straight day

NEW DELHI: India reported over 10,000 COVID cases for the fifth straight day with 10,112 new infections in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare on Sunday.

The country saw a little dip from Saturday's Covid cases tally.

India recorded 12,193 on April 22, 11,692 on April 21, 12,591 on April 20, 10,542 on April 19, 7,633 on April 18, and 9,111 on April 17.

According to the Union Health Ministry, the country's active cases increased to 67,806 which was 67,556 yesterday.

Presently recovery rate stands at 98.66 per cent, the Health Ministry stated further.

As many as 9,833 patients recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours taking the overall count of people cured of the infection to 4,42,92,854, according to the Ministry.

Under the nationwide vaccination drive, India has so far administered 220.66 crore Covid vaccine doses (95.21 cr second doses and 22.87 cr precautionary doses), of which 1,947 doses were administered in the last 24 hours.

The total number of tests conducted in the last 24 hours is 1,43,899, the health ministry stated. In wake of the spike in the number of Covid cases across the country, Dr. PK Mishra, the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister earlier chaired a high-level meeting on Wednesday to assess the situation.

The PMO informed in a statement that the focus of the meeting was on the status of preparedness of health infrastructure and logistics, drugs, vaccination campaign in the country and the key necessary steps as a response to the recent surge in Covid cases.

"Dr PK Mishra stressed that the time tested 5-fold strategy of Test-Track-Treat-Vaccination and adherence Covid Appropriate Behaviour must continue to be implemented and equally crucial to promote awareness within the community regarding Covid appropriate behaviour and caution citizens against complacency," the PMO statement read.

During the meeting, a comprehensive presentation was made by Rajesh Bhushan, the Secretary of Health and Family Welfare providing an overview of the global Covid situation.

The presentation also provided an overview of the Genome Sequencing of different variants since January 2023 and noted the proportion of circulating variants in India.

The status of vaccination was discussed, followed by drug availability and infrastructure preparedness across the country, the PMO stated.

As per directions of the Prime Minister, a nationwide mock drill for the assessment of functional infrastructure was conducted and the status of the mock drill was presented to participants.

Further, the expenditure of the Covid vaccination programme and budget provisions for drugs and vaccine raw materials were also reviewed.