86% of India’s Covid-19 cases confined to 10 states, says govt assessment

Of these, just two states -- Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu -- account for about 50% of the coronavirus cases. Other high disease burden states include Karnataka, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Gujarat.

The number of Covid-19 cases may be going up, but 86% of the total cases are confined to 10 states, officials on the Union health ministry said on Tuesday, citing government statistics.

A health worker closes the door behind him at the Commonwealth Games Village Sports Complex which is temporarily converted into a Covid-19 care centre at Patparganj in New Delhi. (Biplov Bhuyan/HT Photo)

Of these, just two states -- Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu -- account for about 50% of the cases. Other high disease burden states include Karnataka, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Gujarat.

Rajesh Bhushan, officer on special duty, health ministry, also spoke on the need to increase Covid-19 testing, which he said was being done across the country. “Scaling up testing, along with focus on strict implementation of containment measures and improved clinical management of the disease, is the key to check the spread of Covid-19,” Bhushan said.

India has performed 10.2 million Covid-19 tests so far since January 22, with 1,206 laboratories approved for Covid-19 testing across the country.

The health ministry official also spoke on the pending results of Delhi’s sero surveillance -- a blood test done to check the presence of antibodies that determine a past infection due to Sars Cov-2, the virus that causes the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

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“Sero surveys are fairly complex exercises and, therefore, they by definition take time. In the case of Delhi, originally, it was decided that for the sero surveillance we would collect 20,000 samples between June 27 and July 5, but eventually, the sero surveillance ended up collecting 22,823 samples. These are blood samples which are then subjected to ELISA (is a plate-based assay technique) tests. Now that the testing has finished, we are doing the stratification -- gender wise, district wise and age wise, among others -- of the data and analysis,” he said.