In the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, central teams will be deployed in ten states

In response to an increase in COVID-19 cases and mounting concerns about the new Omicron form, the federal government announced on Saturday that it will deploy multidisciplinary teams in at least ten states.

"...A decision has been taken to deploy multi-disciplinary Central teams to 10 identified states some of which are either reporting an increasing number of Omicron & COVID-19 cases or slow vaccination pace...," the Union Health Ministry said.

"Multi-disciplinary Central teams will be deployed in Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Mizoram, Karnataka, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Punjab to monitor the spike in COVID-19 cases," the Union Health Ministry said in an official statement.

"These teams shall be stationed in States allotted for 3 to 5 days and will work along with the state health authorities," read the Union Health Ministry's letter.

The teams will conduct contact tracing, surveillance, and containment operations, as well as Covid-19 testing, which will include submitting sufficient samples from clusters to the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) network for genome sequencing.

Covid suitable behaviours and their enforcement, hospital bed availability, adequate logistics (ambulances, ventilators, medical oxygen, etc.) and immunisation progress, according to a Health Ministry announcement.

The directive came after India recorded 7,189 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours on Saturday, according to the Union Health Ministry. The country's total number of cases of the novel Omicron coronavirus subtype has grown to 415. According to the Ministry of Health, the country's active caseload is at 77,032, the lowest level in 579 days.

"Active cases constitute 0.22 per cent of the country`s total positive cases, which is lowest since March 2020," said the Ministry. With 387 COVID deaths in the last 24 hours, the cumulative death toll due to the virus has climbed 4,79,520.

The Ministry also stated that 7,286 individuals have recovered from the virus in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of recovered patients to 3,42,23,263 since the start of the epidemic.

As a result, India's recovery rate has reached 98.40 percent, its highest level since March 2020.

In the previous 24 hours, 11,12,195 COVID tests have been performed around the country.

"India has so far conducted over 67.10 crore (67,10,51,627) cumulative tests," said the Ministry. As per the release, the weekly positivity rate at 0.60 per cent remains less than 1 per cent for the last 41 days now. While the daily positivity rate has been reported to be 0.65 per cent."

The daily positive rate has been below 2% for the past 82 days and below 3% for the past 117 days, according to the Ministry.

In response to escalating worries about COVID-19 and its rapidly spreading new Omicron form, numerous states and UTs have enacted night curfews and other restrictions.

From 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., night curfews have been implemented in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Haryana, and eight Gujarat towns (Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Gandhinagar, and Junagadh).