Overall positivity rate down, drops in 303 districts against 210 in previous week

New Delhi: The overall Covid-19 positivity rate continues to decline holding out hope that the worst of the second wave is over with more districts reporting a progressive fall in positivity along with increased testing over the last three weeks.

The better news is, however, tempered with concern over positivity rate remaining high in some states with 22, including West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, reporting over 15% positivity, health ministry data shows. Though the reducing positivity rates are a good sign, the progress needs to be sustained over the next few weeks.

The daily positivity rate dropped to 13.4 % on Wednesday, even as more than 20.5 lakh samples – highest in a single day so far – were tested from across the country.

The overall weekly case positivity declined consistently for the last two weeks to 15.2% during May 13-19, against 21.5% ( April 29-May 5) as the number of districts with falling rates also increased to 303 from 210 in the same period.

“India witnessed a consistent upward trend in weekly tests since mid February with average daily tests increased by 2.3 times in last 12 weeks.

13 states have positivity ranging between 5-15%

As a result of increased testing, the case positivity has started declining since last two weeks after a consistent increase for 10 weeks,” Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry said.

He cautioned against any laxity and said a strict vigil and stringent containment measures need to be in place as cases are still high in many states and any lapses can quickly reverse the overall positive trend seen in recent weeks.

Apart from the 22 states with over 15% positivity, there are 13 states where the positivity rate is between 5-15%.

Overall, around 2.76 lakh new cases were reported on Wednesday. Tamil Nadu reported the highest daily new cases at 34,875, followed by Karnataka with 34,281 new cases.

While the total active caseload stood at 31.29 lakh cases, eight states have more than one lakh cases, nine have ranging between 50,000 to one lakh and 19 have less than 50,000 cases