Shillong, June 25: After reporting cases under 600 with mostly around the 400 mark for a week, Meghalaya on Friday once again crossed the barrier of 600 with 602 new cases.

What is worrying is that the recoveries are consistently lagging behind the new cases, putting more pressure on the state healthcare system. Also, the detection of the Delta variant of the novel corona virus in the rural parts has sent alarm bells ringing across the state, with 70 people from one village testing positive for the variant in one day on Thursday.

The situation is most concerning in West Garo Hills and West Jaintia Hills. West Garo Hills reported 126 and West Jaintia Hills reported 119 new cases in the last 24 hours, according to a bulletin from the health department on Friday afternoon.

From Saturday last week to Friday this week, West Garo Hills has reported a total of 415 cases, making an average of 59 cases daily. West Jaintia Hills has reported 471 cases at the same time, with an average of 67 cases daily.

On Thursday, 70 people from the village of Daren Agal in West Garo Hills tested positive for the Delta variant of the Covid-19.

Meanwhile, one district that is reporting over 50 cases daily yet has not be flagged is the Ri-Bhoi district. The district reported 84 cases on Friday; detecting a total of 488 cases in a week’s time including the cases on Friday, making a average of almost 68 cases daily.

This is not to say that the cases have lessened in East Khasi Hills, which has been reporting the highest numbers since the very beginning of the pandemic. The district has detected 916 cases over the course of one week with 134 new cases on Friday alone, making a daily average of around 131 cases.

Mentionably, the state detected 650 cases on June 18 last week, after which the caseload was 514 on June 19, 390 on June 20, 269 – June 21, 421 – June 22, 482 – June 23, and 420 – June 24.

The waning recoveries

While the cases have been rising steadily over the week, the recoveries are on the waning side, which wasn’t the case earlier. On Friday, the recoveries were 354, much lower than the 602 cases detected.

On June 19 the recoveries were 585, June 20 – 542, June 21 – 655, June 22 – 341, June 23 – 434, and on June 24 –298.

This new trend comes after weeks of recovering being more than the daily caseload.
However, overall the recoveries have slightly trumped the new cases with 3,209 recoveries in the past 7 days including Friday against the 3,098 new cases detected.

Currently, the total recoveries stand at 42,001 with 4,665 active cases, while the overall cases detected have reached 47,480.

Delta Variant a cause of concern

One of the major worries for the government has been the detection of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in the state. The Delta variant is attributed as being solely responsible for the second wave of Covid pandemic in the country.

With one village detecting 70 cases in a day for the delta variant is a major cause of concern and there is guarantee that the virus has not spread to other villages. The biggest worry with this variant is its high transmissibility and infection rate, severe symptoms and high fatality rate among the patients.

Even before the case of Daren Agal came to light, Meghalaya Chief Minister, Conrad K Sangma had on June 10, 2021 already announced that the Delta variant had entered the state after doing the genome sequence of large number of samples.

The Delta variant has been designated by the WHO as a ‘variant of concern’ in May and the variant has been found in 80 countries as it spreads further. 60 per cent of the new Covid cases in the UK are now caused by the delta variant while it comprises of 10 per cent new cases in the US.

Meanwhile, India has identified a new strain of the virus called ‘Delta Plus variant’ and labelled it ‘variant of concern’, being a mutation of the delta variant.