death toll in the country increased to 5,30,965 with 11 deaths reported in 24 hours. Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya who chaired a review meet with health ministers of all states and Union Territories asked them to stay alert and remain prepared for the management of the disease.
He had further urged the State Health Ministers to conduct mock drills of all hospital infrastructure on April 10 and 11 and review the health preparedness with district administrations and health officials on April 8 and 9.
Furthermore, the minister urged states to identify emerging hotspots by monitoring trends of influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) cases and sending sufficient samples for testing of COVID-19 and Influenza; and ramping up whole genome sequencing of positive samples. Also Read: COVID-19 origin mystery continues, Chinese researchers publish data from Wuhan market With an uptick in the trend of Covid cases, scientists said that XBB.1.16 is the Covid-19 variant responsible for the present surge.
However, scientists say that people in India have developed hybrid immunity (due to vaccination and natural infection). Therefore, the present Covid-19 variants will not cause a lot of hospitalization.