New Delhi, Jul 25 (IANS): Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on Saturday held a virtual meeting with the Chief Secretaries and Health Secretaries of nine states that are driving the present spurt of the active Covid-19 caseload in the country.

The meeting was part of the coordinated Centre-state strategy for effective containment and management of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has, as on Saturday, reached a tally of over 13 lakh cases in the country.

The nine states that participated in the meeting were Andhra Pradesh (80,858 cases), Bihar (33,926), Telangana (52,466), Odisha (22,693), West Bengal (53,973), Assam (29,921), Karnataka (85,870), Jharkhand (7,493) and Uttar Pradesh (60,771).

The attention of the states was drawn to the fact that early detection and timely clinical management is the key to contain the spread of Covid-19. States were asked to urgently ramp up testing, strictly implement a containment plan, augment health infrastructure and ensure effective clinical management.

As per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, a graded, proactive, progressive and well coordinated strategy of Covid-19 management between the centre and states or Union Territories (UTs) has resulted in ever-increasing recoveries in the country, with progressively falling case fatality rate. There are, however, some states which have in the recent past shown high rise in daily number of active cases and are emerging as concern areas from COVID management point of view, it said.

Maharashtra has so far recorded 3,57,117 corona cases, of which 13,132 patients lost their lives to the disease, followed by Tamil Nadu with 1,99,749 cases and 3,320 deaths. Delhi has registered 1,28,389 cases and 3,777 casualties.

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Sikkim, Manipur and Mizoram administrations have effectively implemented health safety protocol in the last four months. These places have reported zero deaths so far and the recovery rate is more than 60 per cent.