Covid scare: Health Minister Mandaviya to chair high-level meeting on Wednesday as cases jump globally

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandviya will chair a high-level meeting on Wednesday to review the Covid situation in the country. In at least five countries, Covid cases have increased dramatically, triggering fears among other nations.

Earlier in the day, the Union Health Ministry wrote to states and UTs asking them to ramp up genome sequencing to detect any new variants of Covid.

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In a letter to chief secretaries of states, the Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that in view of the sudden rise of cases in Japan, the USA, Korea, Brazil, and China, it was essential to increase whole genome sequencing of positive case samples to track variants through Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) network.

The Union Health Secretary said that all states are requested to ensure that as far as possible samples of all positive cases, on a daily basis, are sent to the designated INSACOG Genome Sequencing Laboratories (IGSLs) that are mapped to the States and UTs.

Currently, India has 3,490 active Covid cases.

While India is witnessing low infection, some other countries have witnessed a sharp rise in Covid numbers in the past few days.

China is reportedly witnessing a massive surge in daily infection. A Twitter user, Jennifer Zeng, on Sunday said that bodies had piled up inside a hospital in China. "Don’t know exactly which hospital, could be Harbin city. The man who shot this video has a strong accent of Northeast China," she said while sharing a video of what she claimed was of a hospital.

On Monday, Zeng again shared another video in which bodies can be seen all around wrapped in yellow bags.

She wrote: "Today, the farewell room of a funeral home in Xinxiang city, Henan Province, #CCPChina. A new row of refrigerated cabinets was added, but still not enough to hold all the bodies. Never happened before."