Aizawl,  The tiny northeastern state, Mizoram on Wednesday crossed the one lakh-mark of Covid cases with 1,471 people testing positive for the virus even as a four-member multi disciplinary central team is now studying the alarming positivity rate of 15.36 per cent, health officials said on Wednesday.

 

According to the health officials, 1,01,327 people so far tested positive for the Covid-19 and 336 people succumbed to the disease with the mountainous state's recovery rate is 84.80 per cent against the national average of 97.94 per cent.

However, according to the Union Health Ministry data, against the national average of 1.33 per cent, Mizoram's Covid fatality rate is 0.33 per cent, lowest among all states in the country.

With only 11 lakh population, bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh, the northeastern state on Wednesday evening had 15,006 active cases, while 85,925 men and women have been recovered of the infectious disease so far.

Mizoram health officials said that the state for the past more than one month has been undertaking mass testing of people mainly through the Rapid Antigen method and might be due to this, the number of positive cases have gone alarmingly high.

The mass testing is being done in each small habitation and locality in collaboration with the local task force and health workers. Of the state's 11 districts, Aizawl has registered the highest number of cases at 64,289 besides recording 250 deaths, followed by Lunglei (7,577 cases, 19 deaths), Kolasib (7,177 cases, 24 deaths) and Khawzawl is the only district where no death has been reported though 630 people have tested positive there so far.

Health officials said that the central team, headed by National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) consultant-epidemiologist, Dr Vinita Gupta, arrived in Aizawl on Tuesday and held a virtual review meeting with the chief medical officers of all the 11 districts on Wednesday.

The team would visit some districts bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The officials said that the state-level expert team on Covid-19 management, which was formed on September 23 headed by F. Lallianhlira, who is also principal director of state health department, has suggested to give more focus on the symptomatic patients, people with high risk factors including pregnant women, elderly people and those with comorbid status to check high mortality rate.

The Mizoram government with effect from Sunday has issued new Covid-19 guidelines with fresh relaxations to ease economic and other activities in Aizawl Municipality Corporation (AMC) area and other parts of the state.

The new guidelines allowed the re-opening of churches in Covid-19 hit AMC area and other parts of the state twice a week -- Sunday and Saturday -- during daytime with 50 per cent seating capacity.

Churches in les affected areas outside the AMC vicinity have been already re-opened since August 22.

According to the new order, most educational institutions would continue to remain shut in the AMC area but training institutes would be allowed to function with 50 per cent seating capacity.

Most educational institutions and Anganwadi centres are functioning in the Covid free areas since August 15.