The Maharashtra Public Health Department has issued fresh directions and has appealed to be cautious, in view of the suspected arrival of a new variant of Covid.
After a decline in new Covid cases over the last few weeks, a surge of the new variant is being experienced in many parts of the world. Earlier steep rise in cases was limited to South Asian countries. Now the cases are rapidly increasing in China and Europe. Weekly new cases in the world are more than 11 million with weekly growth of 8 to 10 percent.
Some of the countries have recorded hi9ghest ever cases since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago. South Korea has reported 6.21 lakh new cases in a day and Germany 2.82 lakh new cases in a day. The United Kingdom reported about 94,000 new cases in the last 24 hours. The population of South Korea is about 5.18 crore and that of Germany about 8.32 crore. Compared to this Maharashtra State has about 12.2 crore population. Highest daily reported cases were 68,000 in a day during the second wave.
The Additional Chief Secretary of Public Health Dr Pradeep Vyas has stated that all Municipal Commissioners need to do the following –1. Crowding needs to be avoided.
2. Appropriate masking needs to be stressed.
3. Be alert in identifying clusters of SARI and ILI cases. ILI and SARI surveillance needs to be stepped up.
4. Vaccination against Covid needs to be pushed up as much as possible. We are much below the national average.
Though at present we are quite comfortable with only around 2,000 active Covid cases, the situation may dramatically change over the next few weeks.
Copies of the new directions have been issued to all Municipal Commissioners and Zilla Parishad CEOs.
