Covid-19 pandemic's third wave in India waning

The Covid-19 pandemic's third wave in the country is waning as the total number of new cases a day has come down to less than a lakh in the last two days. India recorded only 67,597 fresh Covid-19 cases on Monday and 83,876 cases on Sunday. The country's active caseload currently stands at 9.94 lakh, which was more than double a couple of weeks ago. Now active cases account for 2.35% of total infections and the recovery rate is currently at 96.46%.

The daily positivity rate has come down to just over 5.02% and the weekly positivity rate has come down to 8.30%. Compared to this, in the fourth week of January, the daily positivity rate was about 15-20% with a weekly positivity rate of 14.41%. India had over three lakh infections a day by the last week of January since the third wave started prior to the new year. After January 23, new cases started coming down.

Fresh cases in states like Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka, which witnessed over 50,000 cases a day in the second and third week of January, are also coming down. Kerala reported 23,047 cases on Sunday and just over 22,000 on Monday, the same were 15,575 in Maharashtra and 11,422 in Karnataka on Sunday. While Tamil Nadu recorded over 17,000 fresh cases on Sunday, Andhra Pradesh had over 9,000 new cases, Gujarat (6,300), Rajasthan (over 5,000) and Uttar Pradesh (over 4,300) were the only other states having a high number of cases recorded in the 24 hours by Monday morning. Experts in Kerala say the state has passed the peak of the third wave and normalcy can be expected by the end of this month.

The central government had directed all its employees to join back for duty in office from Monday, withdrawing the earlier directive to function with 50% office attendance, which was extended till February 15.

The government said with the administration of more than 55.78 lakh vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India’s Covid-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 170.21 crore doses, as per provisional reports till 7 am today.