WHO: Covid cases may be plateauing at some places, but risk still persists

New Delhi, January 29: Although some cities or states in India are seeing plateauing of Covid-19 cases, the WHO says the risk still persists and focus must be on reducing transmission and implementing situation-specific measures. On Thursday, the Union Health Ministry had said there were early indications of Covid-19 cases plateauing in certain parts of the country, but the trend needed to be observed. Also read | Punjab Elections: Jagmohan Kang's son Yadvinder Singh to contest from Kharar as Independent To a query if coronavirus cases have started plateauing in India, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region, said the risk of Covid-19 remained high and no country, irrespective of their current transmission scenario, was "out of the woods" yet. On January 21, India reported a total of 3,47,254 new Covid-19 cases after which the daily infection count has been reducing. A decline in cases and positivity rate has been especially observed in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Odisha, Haryana and West Bengal. Experts say it is still unknown if the pandemic is entering in endemic stages, but they were still in the midst of the pandemic. The focus should be to curtail the virus spread and save lives. According to health experts, as compared to Covid's Delta variant, Omicron rapidly infects the tissues of the upper respiratory tract rather than the lungs. Meanwhile, India reported 2,35,532 new Covid-19 cases and 871 deaths in the last 24 hours, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday. As per government data, there was a decline in the daily positivity rate to 13.39 percent from 15.88 percent on Friday. Also read | Chandigarh eases Covid restrictions; activities allowed at Sukhna Lake till 10 pm The weekly positivity rate also dipped to 16.89 percent from 17.47 percent on Friday. India's active caseload currently stands at 20,04,333 while the active cases account for 4.91 percent of total cases. With 3,35,939 recoveries from the infection reported in the last 24 hours, the cumulative recoveries mounted to 3,83,60,710. The recovery rate of the country has also improved to 93.89 percent from 93.60 percent on Friday. -PTC News