Mizoram has become the third worst hit state of COVID-19 in the country after Kerala and Maharashtra after it recorded 1731 fresh cases of the virus, the highest ever spike in the last 24 hours, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
The state is in the fourth position in the number of active cases (15,140) as on Tuesday. While Mizoram's daily positivity rate was 18.53% as against the national average of 1.85%, the state's recovery rate was the lowest in the country at 81.09% as against the national average of 97.7%.
The state reported 81,460 cases of COVID-19 as on Tuesday of which 66,904 patients have recovered.
Meanwhile, state nodal officer of integrated disease survelliance programme (ISDP), Dr. Pachuau Lalmalsawma said that 90.30% of the samples sent from Mizoram for whole genome sequencing were found to be new variants. He said that 350 samples for whole genome sequencing were sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBG), West Bengal in August out of which 316 were new variants, which included 3 cases of Delta Plus variant, which has never been detected earlier.
The nodal officer stated that the Delta Plus varinat is 60% more contagious than Delta, which was also found to be over 50% more infectious than the normal coronavirus.
Lalmalsawma further informed that at least 70 samples sent belonged to a new family of Delta variants known as 'Delta Lineages'.
However, the normal Delta variant was found in 213 samples collected from Aizawl, Lunglei, Serchip, Champhai and Kolasib districts, adding that a total 510 samples sent from Mizoram were identified as new variants.
