After facing a severe second wave of coronavirus pandemic between February and May, there has been a sharp decline in India’s daily cases in the last several weeks. However, the recent trajectory of COVID-19 cases has shown some worrying signs.
As per the data shared by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), there has been been a slowdown in the downward trend of daily COVID infections and a slight increase in the positivity rate. This is worrisome as there has been an influx of people at tourist destinations with less or no COVID-appropriate behaviour seen from them.
The Central government has expressed grave concerns over crowds thronging markets and hill stations over the past few days. It has now warned of reimposing lockdown-like restrictions in places where people are found to be blatantly breaking the rules put in place to contain coronavirus outbreaks.
Kerala’s positivity rate alarming
The state has been reporting around one-third of the overall daily COVID infections being reported in the country for the past several days. As many as 13,772 fresh COVID cases were reported yesterday, pushing the total cases to 30.25 lakh in the southern state.The active cases in Kerala have touched 1,10,136. With the new infections, the positivity rate has also surged to over 10 per cent. Meanwhile, Prime Narendra Modi expressed concern about the persistently high number of Covid cases from Maharashtra and Kerala, according to the sources.
‘COVID third wave to hit India in August’
A research report has predicted that India may witness the third wave of COVID-19 in mid-August 2021, raising the alarm bells for policymakers and citizens.The report, COVID-19: The race to finishing line, prepared by SBI Research, claims that the COVID third wave peak will arrive in the month of September 2021.
According to the SBI report, the global data shows that on average, peak COVID-19 cases reached during the third wave are nearly twice or 1.7 times those from the second wave of the pandemic.
India sees 43,393 new COVID cases
Meanwhile, India has witnessed 43,393 new COVID-19 cases, 44,459 recoveries, and 911 deaths in the last 24 hours, as per the latest update by the Health Ministry on Friday morning.The death toll has climbed to 4,05,939 with 911 fresh fatalities.
The active cases comprise 1.49 per cent of the total infections and the national COVID-19 recovery rate stands at 97.19 per cent, the data updated at 8 am showed.