According to the sources, amid rising cases of COVID-19 in India, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will chair a review meeting with the core team of experts today in the physical format in the afternoon. Earlier, Mandaviya chaired a meeting through video conferencing with Health Ministers and senior officials of States and Union Territories (UTs) to review the progress of the vaccination exercise HarGharDastak 2.0 campaign. Highlighting increased case positivity in some districts and States and reduced COVID-19 testing, Mandaviya had stated that increased and timely testing will enable early identification of COVID cases and help to curb the spread of the infection among the community. He had urged States and UTs to continue and strengthen the surveillance and focus on genome sequencing for identifying new mutants/variants in the country. He stated that the five-fold strategy of Test, Track, Treat, Vaccination and Adherence to Covid Appropriate Behaviour (CAB) needs to be continued and monitored by States/UTs.
With a surge in the cases of coronavirus infection in India, the country reported as many as 13,313 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday in the last 24 hours, as compared to the 12,249 cases on Wednesday, informed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. According to the Ministry, 10,972 people have recovered from the infection which took the total number of recoveries to 4,27,36,027 at the rate of 98.6%. Thirty-eight people have died in the last 24 hours due to the infection, taking the total number of deaths to 5,24,941.