COVID cases rise in India – WHO warns pandemic ‘nowhere near over’

• India saw a jump of 24% in daily Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours.
• The number of active cases in the country has surpassed the one lakh mark, comprising 0.3% of the total infections.
• Meanwhile, the number of new cases worldwide had risen by 30% in the last two weeks.

The daily Covid-19 tally in India has jumped by 24% in the last 24 hours with over 16,900 new cases being reported on July 13 even as the World Health Organisation warned that the pandemic was ‘nowhere near over’.

The number of active cases in the country has surpassed the one lakh mark, comprising 0.3% of the total infections. A day earlier, 13,600 cases were reported.

Over 45 fatalities due to Covid have also been recorded, taking the total death tally to 5,25,519. Odisha reported its first Covid death in two months yesterday. The victim was a 78-year-old man in Bhubaneswar.

Most of the deaths were recorded in Kerala, which saw 17 deaths, while Maharashtra and West Bengal together accounted for 13 deaths.

Gujarat, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Odisha, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh reported deaths in the single digits.

Mumbai’s cases surge

Mumbai has reported a 79 percent surge in daily Covid cases, with 400 reported on Wednesday. The state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is based, recorded 2,435 fresh cases.

Odisha, which had registered its last Covid fatality in early May, saw its caseload rise to 1.2 lakhs on Tuesday as 509 more people tested positive for the infection.

West Bengal's Covid-19 death toll rose to 21,251 on Tuesday after five more patients died in the state. It also recorded 2,659 fresh cases, 744 more than the previous day's count.

Source: Covid-19.org

Telangana stands sixth in the list of most-active cases in the country with 5,000 cases. However, the hospitalisation is quite low. State Director of Public Health G Srinivasa Rao said there was no need to fear coronavirus and added that it could be said to have become a seasonal disease.

Kerala has the second-highest caseload and has been witnessing a steady rise in the number of deaths too. The state is reporting over 11 Covid fatalities on a daily basis, which is nearly four times that seen in the last 30 days.

The national capital New Delhi has 2.90% as its positivity rate with 400 fresh cases and one fatality on June 12.

Pandemic not yet over, says WHO

In the meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) also warned all country governments and healthcare systems to take steps to curb the spread of infection as the number of new cases worldwide had risen by 30% in the last two weeks.

“I am concerned that cases of Covid-19 continue to rise - putting further pressure on stretched health systems and health workers. I am also concerned about the increasing trend of deaths," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a media briefing on July 12.

The current spread of Covid-19 cases across the world is largely triggered by the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which tend to be highly transmissible. The subvariant is spreading in various countries, including India.

Amid spreading of this new subvariant, hospitalisation, death rate, surveillance- including testing and sequencing, has drastically dropped all over the world, which is making it even more difficult to assess the impact of the subvariant.

“New waves of the virus demonstrate that Covid-19 is nowhere near over,” Tedros further added.

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