Since the last two weeks, four southern states – Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have been driving India’s Covid-19 epidemic along with Maharashtra, where the numbers are on a steady decline.
At the beginning of May, the southern states accounted for 30% of the total number of new Covid-19 cases reported daily. But their contribution has now risen to more than 40% in the last three days.
On Monday, more than 42% of the daily new cases came from these four states in the last 24 hours, as per the union health ministry data.
Tamil Nadu has emerged as the new state of concern because of a huge number of fresh cases every day, high positivity and low vaccination rate. In the last 24 hours, it reported more than 33K new cases, which is only next to Maharashtra that occupies the top slot with 34K cases.
In three out of the last seven days, Karnataka replaced Maharashtra as the state with the maximum number of new cases.
“The surge in cases occurs at different points in time due to differential onset time, triggered by a combination of testing levels and health system response. The southern states currently see active outbreaks as of now,” Giridhar Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India told DH.
Nearly 100 districts in the four southern states report more than 10% test positivity rate with eight districts reporting more than 40% positivity. Five of the eight are in Karnataka – Ballari (47.2%), Uttara Kannada (46.1%), Mysuru (44.7%), Hassan (42.6%) and Shivamogga (42.1%).
On Tamil Nadu, a health ministry official said the state witnessed a sharp rise in the positive cases in the last one week. Chennai, Chengalpattu and Coimbatore are three TN districts that saw continued rise in the cases since the last two weeks. The positivity rate is more than 40% in two districts – Nagapattinam (42.9%) and Tiruvannamalai (40.5%).
“The rise in southern Indian states should be tackled with early public health measures. Relatively better functioning health systems in these states are assurance of effective handling. However, there can not be any complacency and effective measures should be implemented in a timely manner to respond,” said Chandrakant Lahariya, a public policy and health systems expert in Delhi.
While Uttar Pradesh and Delhi were major concerns at the beginning of the month, the number of new cases in both states came down with UP reporting just about 10,000 cases in the last 24 hours. Delhi on Monday recorded less than 5000 cases in the last 24 hours, which is the lowest since April 5.
The experts, however, are worried about the ground reality in the absence of adequate testing that may lead to the creation of an artificial peak in the Covid-19 curve.
“The testing levels are suboptimal in most states. In the absence of reliable testing levels in the country, the distorting data is confounding the response; it is difficult to explain which states have actually contained the transmission and which are not,” said Babu.
“In north Indian states including UP, we are not sure of the current situation till we scale up the testing and get a better picture,” added Lahariya.
After 26 days, the number of new cases dropped below 3 lakh as 2,81,386 new cases were registered in the last 24 hours. As many as 4,106 deaths were reported in the same period.