The week ending Sunday, Maharashtra and the five southern states, along with the Puducherry UT, together registered about 2.2 lakhs of new cases. Kerala alone accounted for more than 1.7 lakh of new infections, followed by Tamil Nadu (11,161) and Andhra Pradesh (8,660). By contrast, the cumulative count of cases in 14 states and UTs of northern and central India (other than Maharashtra and Goa) during this period was only 3,687, barely 1.6% of the number reported in Maharashtra and in the south.
These states / UTs include J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The region includes the five states that recorded the lowest number of new cases in the country last week. Rajasthan leads this list with only 61 new infections detected last week.
The nine states of East and Northeast India (including Bengal and Odisha) together accounted for nearly 21,000 new cases. Meanwhile, over the past week, while Kerala reported a 16.4% drop in Covid cases, infections increased in four states and UT among which reported at least 500 cases per week. These are Bengal, which recorded a 6.9% increase in infections, Tamil Nadu (3%), Mizoram (12.7%) and J&K (21.7%). Tiny Mizoram recorded more than 7,000 new cases, the fifth highest after Kerala (1.7 lakh), Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. This was the third consecutive week of increasing cases in Mizoram.
On Monday, India recorded 24,369 new cases of coronavirus, with a Kerala count of 15,058. There were 218 new deaths from the virus. Case detections drop sharply every Monday due to testing and staff shortages over the weekend. India had reported 31,454 cases on Sunday.