Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Dec 24: The World is witnessing the fourth surge of COVID-19 pamdemic and India has to be on guard, said Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Friday.
While addressing a weekly press briefing, the Union Health Secretary issued a warning against the COVID-19 and the new Omicron variant and said, “The world is witnessing the fourth surge & and the overall positivity is 6.1%.Therefore, we have to be on guard and we can’t afford to slacken”.
He also informed that the top five states with the highest number of active cases, at the moment, are Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Karnataka. The country so far reported 358 Omicron cases in 17 States and UTs while 114 people have recovered from the new variant.
“Ministry of Health and Family Welfare preemptively advised States on 21st December -to impose restrictions like night curfew, regulating large gatherings. increase bed capacity and other logistics and strict enforcement of COVID appropriate behavior,” said Union Health Secretary.
He further informed that the country have 18,10,083 isolation beds, 4,94,314 O2 supported beds, 1,39,300 ICU beds, 24,057 pediatric ICU beds and 64,796 pediatric non-ICU beds nationally.
While speaking on the medical oxygen, he said, There was a 10 fold increase in oxygen demand from 1st wave to 2nd wave. Thus, 18,800 metric tonnes of medical oxygen per day has been arranged for; cause of concern is 11 states where vaccination coverage is less than the national average.
