In a press briefing held today, on August 3, the Ministry of Health and Family welfare stated that the the COVID19 pandemic is far from over yet and its second wave in India is still around.

It also stated that the reproductive number or the ‘R number’ of COVID19 is still high in eight states. The ‘R number’ denotes the number of persons infected from a single case of COVID19 infection.

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An official from the ministry informed that the R number is more than 1 in eight states including Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

“The R-number is high in eight states of India. Whenever this number is above one, it means that the case trajectory is increasing and it needs to be controlled. US, Canada, Australia and India have 1.2 R number on average,” Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Union Health Ministry told in the briefing.

“There are 18 districts, including 10 districts of Kerala where an increasing trend in cases is seen. These 18 districts from six states — Kerala, Maharashtra, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh — which are contributing 47.5 per cent of the total Covid cases now,” he added.

Moreover, there are 44 districts where the case positivity rate is over 10 per cent. These districts are located in Kerala, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland among others. The number of cases has decreased in 222 districts, Agarwal informed.

On June 1, there were 279 districts where over 100 cases were reported but the number has decreased to 57 districts now.

Meanwhile, India reported 30,549 fresh COVID19 cases and 422 deaths over the past 24 hours. The country’s recovery rate now stands at 97.38 per cent.

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