Six Indian states have been put on alert in the wake of the recent surge in COVID-19 cases.
In a letter to the states, India's Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan requested that the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka conduct adequate and proactive testing, monitor new clusters and influenza-like illnesses, and send samples of international travellers, sentinel sites and clusters for genomic sequencing.
The letter came after India reported over 700 coronovirus cases on Thursday, the highest number of cases seen since mid-November.
Health officials blame the new strain of coronavirus — XBB1.16 — for the recent rise in infections. The XBB1.16 variant is a fast-spreading mutation already identified in several nations, including neighboring China, Singapore, and the United States.
“Most COVID-19 cases remain mild, and hospital admissions remain close to the minimum — but these are early signs, we’ll have to wait a week or two to see if anything changes,” said Rahul Pandit, director of critical care at Fortis Hospitals, Mumbai, and member of Maharashtra’s COVID-19 task force told earlier.
The rise in coronavirus cases comes at a time when India is already witnessing a spike in the number of H3N2 influenza cases. According to the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project, nearly 600 cases of influenza have been recorded in the country so far, with 451 of them classified as H3N2.