Aizawl, A four-member central team now visiting Mizoram to assess the Covid-19 situation, amid the spurt in infections in the northeastern state, officials said on Tuesday.

Mizoram Health and Family Welfare Department officials said that the Covid positivity rate in the state stands at an alarming 10.27 per cent.

According to the Union Health Ministry data on Tuesday, the Covid active case ratio in Mizoram currently stands at 1.02 per cent, highest in the country.

Mizoram state nodal officer for the integrated disease control and surveillance programme Pachuau Lalmalsawma said that during its five-day-long visit, the multi- disciplinary Central team would visit Kolasib and other districts, different Covid Care Centres and the Zoram Medical College and Hospital besides holding a series of meetings with the state government officials.

Separate multi-disciplinary central teams have been deployed in 10 states -- Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Mizoram, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Punjab - which are reporting either increasing numbers of Omicron and Covid-19 cases or slow vaccination pace.

"Before leaving the state on Friday, the central team would suggest ways and means to contain the spread of the Covid-19," Lalmalsawma, who is also the spokesperson of the Mizoram Health Department, told IANS.

According to the Union Health Ministry data, against the national average of 1.38 per cent, Mizoram's Covid fatality rate is 0.38 per cent, the lowest among all states in the country.

Health officials said that a total of 1,40,748 people have so far tested positive and 541 people succumbed to the disease. The recovery rate in the mountainous state is 98.71 per cent as against the national average of 98.40 per cent.

With only 11 lakh population, the state had 1,276 active cases on Tuesday, while 1,38,931 have been recovered of the infectious disease so far.

Mizoram health officials said the state for the past more than three months has been undertaking mass testing of people mainly through the Rapid Antigen method and might be due to this, the number of positive cases has gone alarmingly high. The mass testing is being done in each and every habitat 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 84,561 besides recording 368 deaths, followed by Lunglei (12,011 cases, 30 deaths), and Kolasib (8,476 cases, 34 deaths).