Bihar witnessed a slight increase in the number of fresh cases with 94 more people testing positive during the past 24 hours, though no new variant of the COVID virus has been detected across the state till Sunday. This was more than what Bihar registered in the past week, which was average 53.71 cases per day from February 14 to 20.

In the seven days, only 38 new cases were registered on February 17 and a maximum of 67 on February 19 with active cases below 500. However, the fresh 94 cases took the number of active cases in the state to 536.

State health department principal secretary Pratyaya Amrit said he has not got a report of any new variant in the state so far. But he advised people to follow the norms. “Put on a mask, use sanitiser and maintain social distance in any gathering. We are on alert mode and one thing should be clear that even after taking the vaccine, people should follow the norms,” he added.

Following a spike in daily cases in several parts of the country recently, the Centre also wrote to all the states on Sunday to increase the proportion of RT-PCR tests and subject the people found negative in rapid antigen test to mandatory RT-PCR test and maintain strict surveillance.

When asked about the instruction from the Centre, Pratyaya said they have the capacity to test 20,000 to 22,000 samples through RT-PCR daily and a meeting will be held on Monday to discuss these issues. He further said Bihar was ready to tackle any situation.

As per the press statement issued by the Centre, Maharashtra and Kerala alone had more than 74% of active cases in the country and a spike in daily cases were also being registered in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.

For instance, Maharashtra reported 6281 new cases on Sunday, followed by Kerala (4650), Karnataka (490), Tamil Nadu (438) and Punjab (352).

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