3 Kerala districts on Nipah alert; genome sequencing on

New Delhi, September 6

After the detection of a Nipah case in Kerala’s Kozhikode, the Health Ministry today asked the Kerala Government to put Kannur, Malappuram and Wayanad on the alert.

Deaths at 5-mth low

Daily deaths (219) on Monday were lowest in around five months. The country had seen 199 daily deaths on March 23.

• No weekly Covid case in 86 districts

Eleven contacts of the boy who died have shown symptoms and 251 contacts traced, 129 of them health workers.

Meanwhile, states and UTs sent 16,055 RTPCR-positive Covid-19 samples for whole genome sequencing to the apex lab network under the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium in July and August, the government said today.

These numbers are, however, less than the 16,681 samples sequenced in April. The Health Ministry attributed the decline in numbers to localisation of the disease and the growing number of districts with zero cases. As of today, 86 districts had zero new Covid-19 cases in a week with INSACOG focusing sharply on Kerala and Maharashtra, contributing 80 per cent of the new national infections. INSACOG sequenced 16,681 samples in April, 14,112 in May and 11,624 in June. In July, 9,066 samples were sent through sentinel sites, while the number was 6,969 in August.

The samples with variants of concern (VOC) received by the National Centre for Disease Control from INSACOG labs also fluctuated. The number was 2,207 in January, 1,321 in February, 7,806 in March, 5,713 in April, 10,488 in May, 12,257 in June, 6,990 in July and 6,458 in August.

The ministry said daily positivity rate had remained below 3 per cent for seven days and below 5 per cent for 91 days, causing samples for sequencing to decline.

“With the decrease in positivity, the samples’ availability from the sentinel sites catering to districts with zero or single-digit weekly new cases has gone down,” the ministry said.

India shifted its sequencing strategy after January. The initial sequencing was aimed at detecting variants of concern (VOC) among incoming international travellers.

For this, 5 per cent of positive samples were sequenced. The stated objective was achieved by January-end. Gradually sentinel sites were set up across states to send samples to ensure proper representation of all districts. — TNS