Districts with over 10% Covid positivity rate must restrict gatherings: Centre

New Delhi, July 31 The Centre has directed 10 severely Covid-19 affected states on Saturday to ensure that all districts reporting positivity rate above 10 per cent must ensure strict restrictions on public gatherings. According to the ICMR, 80 per cent of the cases were in most of the states were in home isolation.

The directions were issued by Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan during a review meeting with the states that reported surge in daily Covid-19 cases.

These states are Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur.

Any laxity at this stage could contribute to another wave. He stressed the need to effectively and strictly monitor cases. More than 80 per cent active cases in these states were reported to be in home isolation.

Bhushan advised the states to focus on the districts with less than 10 per cent and improve their vaccination rate.

DG ICMR Balram Bhargava, present in the meeting, highlighted the fact that 46 districts were showing more than 10 per cent positivity while another 53 districts were showing positivity between 5 and 10 per cent and directed states to ramp up their testing.

The states were advised to conduct their own state-level sero-surveys for district-wise disease prevalence data, as the national level sero-prevalence the survey was heterogeneous in nature, in collaboration with ICMR to ensure the same sturdy protocols of the survey.

The states were advised to undertake intensive containment and active surveillance in clusters reporting higher cases and to define containment zones, based on mapping of cases and contacts traced. All these states in the meeting were advised to report death count as per ICMR guidelines.