COVID-19 R-value more than 1 in 8 states, UTs; cause of concern: Govt

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The R number may be a measure that highlights the amount of individuals a coronavirus positive person infects, thereby reflecting the severity of its spread. variety of 1 or below one indicates a slowly spreading virus, while any number above one indicates a rapid spread.

The government on Tuesday said that the reproductive number or R-value that indicates the speed at which COVID-19 is spreading is quite one in eight states and UTs, including Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which is explanation for concern.

Addressing a news conference , Joint Secretary from Health Ministry Lav Agarwal said the pandemic is way from over as a surge in cases is being noted globally, and therefore the second wave, as far as India cares , remains not over. The daily new Covid cases being reported across the planet are still high as quite 4.7 lakh infections are being recorded everyday, he said.

‘Presently, the R number in eight states and UTs — Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Lakshwadweep, Tamil Nadu, Mizoram, Karnataka, Puducherry and Kerala — is showing an increasing trend and is quite one which may be a explanation for concern,’ he said and underlined that containment measures need to be implemented strictly in such places.

‘Delta variant is spread in our country and may be a dominant problem… The pandemic remains raging and that we are concerned that some states have the R number which is rising, which shows the virus wishes to expand and that we must curb it,’ NITI Aayog Member (Health) Dr V K Paul said underlining states must do contact tracing and make containment zones wherever clusters are identified.

Agarwal said 44 districts across 12 states and UTs, including Kerala, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya, are reporting quite 10 per cent weekly positivity within the week ending August 2.

Also, 18 districts across six states — Kerala (10 districts), Maharashtra (3), Manipur (2), Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram (1 each) — are reporting an increasing trend in daily new cases during the last four weeks He added that within the last week, 49.85 per cent of the entire cases were reported from Kerala.

However, districts with greater than 100 cases declined from 279 within the week ending June 1 to 57 within the week ending on Lammas , Agarwal said.

An overall declining trend was observed across India in weekly positivity since week ending May 10 and therefore the weekly positivity was recorded but 2 per cent (1.98 pc between July 27 to August 2) for the primary time in three months, he said. ‘A mixed picture is coming to the fore. Those districts reporting quite 100 cases daily have decreased, there’s an overall decline in Covid positivity rate but at an equivalent time new districts are exposure with high positivity, and reproduction number is quite 1 and is increasing in some states and UTs. So its a mixed picture and continuing high active caseload in Kerala continues to be of serious worry,’ Paul said.

On the vaccination front, Agarwal said the entire number of doses administered in July is quite double of that in May While 6.10 crore vaccine doses were administered in May, 11.96 crore got in June and a complete 13.45 crore doses got in July.

Elaborating on how the vaccination pace has picked up, Agarwal said India crossed the 30 crore mark in 159 days. It then took 24 days more to succeed in the 40 crore mark thereby giving 40 crore doses in 183 days and administering 45 crore in another 11 days.

Seven states, Uttar Pradesh , Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and West Bengal , have administered quite 3 crore doses, Agarwal said in response to an issue , Paul said that the govt is in talks with Moderna.

‘We are still in consultation with them and it takes coming together on the bottom on the conditions of the contract and other issues we’ll visit, we’ve made progress, we hope to form more progress’.

Agarwal said that Johnson & Johnson didn’t apply for emergency use approval (EUA) for its Covid vaccine and has withdrawn their application for conducting its phase 3 clinical test .

‘The application was to undertake clinical test and once we issued relaxed guidelines during which we said if you’ve got approval from regulatory bodies of other countries then exemption are going to be given from clinical trials and emergency use authorisation are going to be given and trial are often continued afterward , so now since they didn’t need it they withdrew that application,’ he said.

In a bid to fast-track emergency approvals for all foreign produced jabs, the Centre had announced that Covid vaccines which were approved for restricted use by regulators within the US, UK, Europe and Japan, or which were on the Who’s Emergency Use Listing, wouldn’t need to conduct bridging clinical trials in India.

On media reports that the newest sero-survey shows that an outsized number of cases weren’t detected, Paul said national sero-surveys that are done provides a national picture and aren’t meant to hide the granularity at the state or sub-state level.

‘Sero-surveys include an enormous number of individuals who were asymptomatic, extrapolating that and saying mortality happened during this proportion is biased, irrational and misplaced…,’ he said.

Also, there’s no discussion on reducing the allocation of vaccines (25 pc) to non-public hospitals presently, Paul said.