Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya to visit Assam next week to monitor the COVID-19 situation. He will also visit Kerala as the state reported increasing numbers of cases of coronavirus.
Mansukh Mandaviya will be visiting Kerala on August 16 to monitor the coronavirus situation in the state. He is expected to meet Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and state health minister Veena George and other officials involved in the COVID management.
Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya is likely to visit Assam thereafter on August 17 for a review meeting.
Director of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and other senior officials of the health ministry will also accompany Mansukh Mandaviya.
Recently, a six-member central team had visited eight districts of Kerala that are witnessing spike in coronavirus cases. The team has said the state may witness around 4.6 lakh COVID-19 cases from August 1 to August 20.
According to the report submitted by the team, the COVID-19 positivity rate was found to be more than 10 per cent in all the eight districts and at some places, it was found to be increasing. Over 80 per cent of the cases were of the Delta variant of the virus.
"Contact-tracing was found to be abysmally low — 1:1.2 to 1:1.7 — and the Rt value, which was the lowest (0.8) on June 1, is continuously rising with a current Rt value of 1.2," National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Director Dr Sujeet Singh, who headed the central team, said.
The team visited Kasaragod, Kannur, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Alappuzha, Kollam, Pathanamthitta and Thiruvananthapuram districts in Kerala.
On the other hand, the COVID-19 count of Assam climbed to 5,78,733 as 763 more people tested positive for the infection on Friday, while 20 fresh fatalities pushed the death toll to 5,471, the National Health Mission said in a bulletin.