NEW DELHI: As COVID cases witness a spike in the country, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Wednesday said there was need to panic but asked the states and Union Territories to be alert and be prepared with mock drills of hospital preparedness, increased surveillance and effective communication with people.
Mandaviya, who chaired a high-level COVID review meeting with health ministers of various states to assess the current status and hospital preparedness to combat the situation, stressed that health is not an area for any politics and the union health minister is available for every support.
The review meeting came on the day, the ministry confirmed 21 cases of the new Coronavirus variant JN.1, which is leading a surge in many countries, including the US, China, and Singapore.
While Goa has reported 19 cases of the JN.1 variant - which has been declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a "variant of interest" after the strain's rapid rise around the world - Maharashtra and Kerala have recorded one case each, according to ministry officials.
According to Union Health Ministry data, three deaths were reported in Kerala. The country recorded 614 Covid cases, over 500 from Kerala alone, in the last 24 hours, the highest since May 20 this year when 756 cases were reported.
In his virtual meeting with state health ministers, which was also attended by Kerala’s health minister Veena Geroge, Mandaviya asked for smooth coordination between the centre and the states to ensure efficient management of COVID.
Reminding states that COVID is not over yet, he said, the states need to monitor emerging evidence of COVID cases, symptoms, and case severity to plan appropriate public health response.
"Let us undertake mock drills once every three months at both the central and state levels and share best practices," he said, as he urged all states and UTs to ensure preventive measures are taken, given the cold conditions during winter season, and the coming festival season.
NITI Ayog member V K Paul said that in the past two weeks, 16 deaths were reported in people with serious co-morbidities. "Currently, there are around 2,300 active cases of COVID-19 in the country. The upsurge is due to the Covid JN.1 variant. There is no need to panic,” he said.
At the meeting, Union Health Ministry secretary Sudhansh Pant presented the global and domestic COVID situation and said cases in India are significantly less compared to the global numbers.
But in the past two weeks, there has been a steep rise in active cases from 115 on December 6 to 614 on Wednesday.
Of this, 92.8 per cent of the cases are home-isolation, indicating mild illness, and no increase in hospitalisation rates has been seen due to Covid, he said.
The cases that are hospitalised are due to other medical conditions, while Covid is an incidental finding, he said, adding that the rise in daily positivity rate has been reported in Kerala, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Karnataka.
He also said that the JN.1 variant is under intense scientific scrutiny but not a cause of immediate concern.
No clustering of cases due to the JN.1 variant has been observed in India. All the cases were found to be mild, and the patients recovered without any complications, Pant said.
Further, the ministry said, states and UTs have been requested to ramp up testing and refer a large number of samples of COVID-19-positive cases and pneumonia-like illnesses to INSACOG Genome Sequencing Laboratories (IGSLs) daily, for sequencing, to track new variants, if any.
The ministry on Monday issued an advisory to all the states/UTs to be alert and take proactive measures to combat the spread of COVID-19. Many states, including Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Uttarakhand, have announced safety measures.
Karnataka, which is the only state, which has announced a mask mandate, especially for those above 60 years, on Wednesday, further declared that schools should regularly check the temperature, sanitise school areas, and ask students to wear masks.