Mizoram's Covid-19 positivity rate at alarming 16.39%

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Aizawl, Sep 14 (IANS) Triggering widespread concern, the Covid-19 positivity rate in Mizoram has jumped to 16.39 per cent, the highest in India, officials said on Tuesday.

According to health officials in Aizawl, in mountainous Mizoram, where the first Covid-19 death was reported on October 28, 2020, six months after the northeast region's first coronavirus fatality in Assam and seven months after India's first in Karnataka, around 1,000 people are testing positive for Covid on every single day during the past two weeks.

Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry data on Tuesday said that the active ratio in Mizoram is 18.34 per cent against Kerala's 4.77 per cent.

With a 1.1 million population (2011 census), Mizoram, India's second least populous state, has, so far, recorded 72,883 positive cases with 241 fatalities.

Covid data analysis found that Mizoram, which shares borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh, had over 6.5 per cent of its population infected by the disease.

Talking to IANS, Mizoram health officials said that the state's recovery rate is 82.74 per cent against the national recovery rate of 97.58 per cent.

"We had undertaken mass testing of people mainly through the Rapid Antigen method. Might be due to this,s the number of positive cases have gone high. Our state's Covid fatality rate is 0.33 per cent, lowest in India," said Pachuau Lalmalsawma, who is the state's nodal officer of Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme.

"Our health officials and workers accompanied by the local Task Force volunteers are conducting active searches for cases through contact tracing. Mass testing covering all citizents of each locality across the state has been done vigorously. Not a single household would remain without testing."

Alarmed by the abnormal increase in the number of positive cases, the Centre rushed a two-member expert team to the state last week.

"The central expert team is now studying the cases in Mizoram. After getting their report and recommendations, we would take subsequent steps to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 cases," Lalmalsawma said.

As per the data of the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry, Punjab, at 2.74 per cent death ratio, has the highest mortality rate in the country followed by Uttarakhand (2.15 per cent), and Maharashtra (2.13 per cent).

On Tuesday afternoon, Mizoram has 13,369 active cases, while 59,273 people have recovered from the disease so far.

According to state immunisation officer Lalzawmi, around 6.72 lakh people have been inoculated, of which over three lakh people have received both doses of vaccines.

Of the state's 11 districts, Aizawl district has registered highest number of 38,137 positive cases and 183 deaths followed by Kolasib with 828 cases and 23 deaths. Khawzawl is the only district where no death has been reported though 142 people tested positive.

(Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)

--IANS

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