New Delhi

India registered 5,880 Covid infections in the past 24 hours, data released by the health ministry on Monday showed. The cases have been witnessing an upward trend for the past week. Health experts have attributed this uptick to the new variant XBB.1.16. They said it accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the new cases. Meanwhile, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya is overseeing a nationwide mock drill to take stock of Covid preparedness across private and public hospitals. It is scheduled to begin on April 10 and will end on April 11. On Monday, the minister will visit AIIMS hospital in Jhajjar town in the northern Haryana state. 

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The latest move follows the decisions taken in a review meeting held on April 7, where Mandaviya urged state health ministers to visit hospitals and oversee the mock drills. In the meeting, Mandaviya stressed the need to identify emergency hotspots by monitoring trends of influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) cases, ramping up testing and vaccination, and ensuring readiness of hospital infrastructure.