Daily cases hit 3-month high in India

India on Thursday, March 11,  logged 22,854 new Covid-19 cases, the highest in nearly three months as well as this year, as Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu continued to fuel the pandemic burden. The total cases reached 1,12,85,561, riding on a surge in 24-hour infections. It was 76 days ago on December 25 that 23,067 cases were recorded. India’s active cases have gone up from a low of 1.35 lakh on February 12 to a high of 1.89 lakh today, but the government said the disease graph was stable nationally. The high-burden states, it said, needed to prioritise vaccinations. The surges have been high in six states in particular. The daily new cases in Punjab grew around 4.5 times between February 11 and March 11, from 2,112 to 9,402. The rise is around six-fold when compared with 1,388 cases in the first week of February. With around 8,000 cases and over 100 deaths reported over the past one week, Punjab appears headed towards a spike worst than the one in September last when over 60,000 cases were reported in a month. The active cases too have shot up five times—from around 2,000 in February first week to almost 10,000 today. The state today also saw imposition of night curfew in Patiala and Ludhiana districts in view of the rising cases. The government said India had seen active cases as high as 10 lakh on September 18 last and the situation nationally was overall in control, except in six states. The eight of the country’s 10 highest active case burden districts are in Maharashtra and one each in Kerala and Karnataka. The government said Haryana, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh were at a tipping point and were yet to enter a surge, said Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan. In MP, daily cases have risen from 1,951 on February 11 to 3,915 on March 11; corresponding period rise in Haryana is 824 to 2,440 and in Gujarat from 1,800 to 3,529. On vaccinations, the government said the speed was satisfactory with 2,56,90,545 doses administered till today morning. Globally, India is second only to the US on the speed and scale of inoculation. As of March 9, the US had delivered 9.36 crore doses followed by India (2.43 crore) and the UK (2.37 crore). “The signs from Maharashtra are very worrying. Do not take the virus for granted. It can come up unexpectedly. We also need to caution Delhi as many adjoining districts like Gurugram, Ghaziabad and Gautam Budhh Nagar are seeing surges,” the government said. Punjab health officials said the state may see the worst spike by March-end with cases expected to soar to 3,000 a day. The state has recorded around 8,000 cases and over 100 deaths in a week. Meanwhile, PM Narendra Modi’s mother Hiraben, a centenarian, took her first dose of Covid-19 vaccine on Thursday.