COVID-19 situation 'very optimistic', says Niti Aayog

The Niti Aayog on Thursday termed the COVID-19 situation “very optimistic” but said some states were still reporting a large number of cases.

“Overall COVID-19 situation is very optimistic. However, some states including Kerala, Mizoram, Himachal are still reporting a large number of cases. We cannot lower our guard,” said Dr VK Paul, member-health.

Paul said India had learnt a great deal about the pandemic and the COVID-19 virus but the world still did not know everything about it. “The world should remain united to fight this virus and should continue to use the tools that are at our disposal,” he added.

During the presser, Luv Aggarwal, joint secretary, Ministry of Health, said India’s daily positivity rate had come down to 4.44 per cent from 20.75 per cent on January 24.

As per the ministry’s latest data, four states – Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka – have more than 50,000 active cases of COVID-19, and 11 states have active cases between 10,000 and 50,000.

Amid a consistent fall in fresh infections, the data shows India’s daily cases rose by 67,084 in the last 24 hours, while the death toll climbed to 506,520 with 1,241 fatalities.

With this, the country’s active caseload currently stands at 7,90,789, which accounts for 1.86 per cent of total cases. The daily positivity rate in India has been recorded at 4.44 per cent and the weekly positivity rate at 6.58 per cent.

Meanwhile, India crossed the grim milestone of five lakh COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, becoming the third country in the world to do so after the US and Brazil. The country took 217 days to reach five lakh deaths from four lakh recorded on July 1 last year, the longest time taken to record one lakh fatalities. India was hit by a devastating second wave in April-May last year.