India records 53,480 new Covid-19 cases in last 24 hours

NEW DELHI: A day after the Centre warned that the coronavirus situation in India is "turning from bad to worse" and is a huge cause of worry, especially for some states, India has reported 53,480 more positive cases in the last 24 hours taking India's Covid-19 tally to 1,21,49,335, while 354 more fatalities pushed the death toll to 1,62,468, the Union Health Ministry said on Wednesday morning.

Several states have reported a sharp rise in the country. At a press conference on Tuesday Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said 10 districts with maximum active Covid-19 cases are Pune (59,475), Mumbai (46,248), Nagpur (45,322), Thane (35,264), Nashik (26,553), Aurangabad (21,282), Bengaluru Urban (16,259), Nanded (15,171), Delhi (8,032), Ahmednagar (7,952).

The Health Department has urged to ramp up the number of tests with a special focus on RT-PCR tests. "Rapid antigen tests must be used for screening and in densely populated areas from where cases are being reported in clusters," Bhusan said.

He further advised the states to strengthen the healthcare resources including private and public health facilities and to enforce Covid-appropriate behaviour.

Meanwhile, the Centre said on Tuesday that both Covishield and Covaxin vaccines are effective against the UK and the Brazilian variants of coronavirus, while the work against the South African strain was on at several laboratories.

In Gujarat night curfew has been imposed in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot. While the district authorities in Nashik have imposed restrictions on the market area to prevent it from getting crowded. The Commissioner of Police said that the authorities will issue a ticket of Rs 5 for a person to enter the market area.

Meanwhile, schools in Ladakh have reopened for Class 6 onwards, months after remaining shut due to the pandemic. "We're following all the SOPs. We have reduced students' strength to 50% in each class. Students will have to come to school on alternative days," said a school staff. On the other hand, the Uttar Pradesh government has extended to April 4 the closure of all schools for students up to Class 8.

61 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have already been administered in India, while the country has given 64 million doses to 84 nations under various programmes.

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