Active cases account for 0.01% of total reported infections, while the recovery rate stands at 98.80%, according to the health ministry.
As of now, Karnataka has 1,536 active cases, Kerala has 1,887 active cases. Maharashtra has 614 active cases, Odisha 133 cases, Rajasthan 214 cases, Tamil Nadu has 385 active cases, Uttar Pradesh 148 and West Bengal has 119 active cases so far.
The country conducted over 230,054 tests in the last 24 hours.
Under the covid vaccination drive, more than 219.88 crore vaccine doses have been administered to the people across the country so far.
“Covid will never be in endemicity stage because that’s a nature of RNA virus. Covid virus is something which is rapidly mutating. The existing Omicron virus BA.1 and BA.2 has more than 623 sub-mutations and sub lineages. So, they are continuing to evolve but the overall intensity, infectivity and pathogenicity and severity is decreasing. More importantly, the overall death rate is continuing to decrease. The reasons are: it is milder and second reason is that India’s more than 98% of population is fully vaccinated. At the same time, significant amount of elderly, co-morbid patients have already got the booster dose. So, India is in comfortable position right now," Dr Sanjeev Bagai, a paediatrician.
“India’s covid vaccines I.e. covisheild and covaxin have excellent efficacy against omicron. Even if the new variant comes, the existing vaccines are holding very well immune response," Bagai said.
With a steady fall in covid cases across the country, several state governments have eased travel norms and mandatory wearing of masks.
However, the Centre has directed states and union territories to continue monitoring lnfluenza-like illness (lLl) & SARI cases and also undertake constant genome sequencing to track variants.
