Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, MP, TN, Gujarat & Chhattisgarh witnesses an upsurge in daily new cases

India’s active caseload is 1,51,708 on February 25 comprising 1.37 per cent of the total positive cases. This is largely attributable to the upsurge in daily new cases in some States. Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh have recorded a rise in daily new cases.

16,738 new daily cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours. 89.57 per cent of the new cases are from seven states.

Maharashtra continues to report the highest daily new cases at 8,807. It is followed by Kerala with 4,106 while Punjab reported 558 new cases.

The Centre has deputed high-level multi-disciplinary teams to Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir (UT) to ascertain reasons for the surge and coordinate with the State Health Departments in COVID-19 control and containment measures.

The Centre has also written to States/UTs to focus on undertaking aggressive measures to break the chain of transmission. The States/UT have been advised to increase testing in a focussed manner in the affected districts with the appropriate split of RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen Tests and to also ensure that all symptomatic negatives of antigen tests are compulsorily tested via RT-PCR tests.

On the other hand, the country has been witnessing a continuous decline in cumulative positivity rate. As on 25th Feb 2021, the cumulative positivity rate stands at 5.17 per cent.