Mizoram third worst Covid hit state in India

AIZAWL: Mizoram recorded 1,731 fresh Covid-19 cases, it’s highest ever spike, in the past 24 hours, making it the third worst affected state in the country after Kerala and Maharashtra, the ministry of health and family welfare said on Tuesday.
The state is in the fourth position in the number of active cases (15,140) as on Tuesday. While Mizoram’s daily positivity rate was 18.53% as against the national average of 1.85%, the state’s recovery rate was the lowest in the country at 81.09% as against the national average of 97.7%.The total number of infections in the state as on Tuesday was 81,460 of which 66,904 people have recovered. Meanwhile, state nodal officer of integrated disease surveillance program (ISDP) Dr Pachuau Lalmalsawma said on Tuesday that 90.30% of the samples sent from Mizoram for whole genome sequencing were found to be new variants. “We sent 350 samples for whole genome sequencing to the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), Kalyani, West Bengal in August, of which 316 were new variants, which included 3 variants of Delta plus, never been detected in the state earlier,” Lalmalsawma said.
He added that the Delta Plus variant is 60% more contagious than Delta, which was also found to be over 50% more infectious than the normal coronavirus. At least 70 samples sent belonged to a new family of Delta variants known as “Delta Lineages”, being under study by experts and not yet named, he said. The normal Delta variant was found in 213 samples collected from Aizawl, Lunglei, Serchhip, Champhai and Kolasib districts, he said, adding that a total of 510 samples sent from Mizoram were identified as new variants.