50% Indians avoid mask, 64% cover mouth, only 14% wear it properly: Survey

A survey carried out by the Union Ministry of Health in 25 cities has revealed that over half the Indian population is not wearing masks.

According to the survey, cited by the Health Ministry and posted on Twitter by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, of the 50% of people who do not wear a mask, 64% cover the mouth but not the nose, 20% have it on the chin and 2% simply wear it around the neck.

Only 14% of people wear the mask correctly, said the survey, which means covering the nose, mouth, chin and with a clip on the nose. The ministry also warned that it was seeing an ingress of COVID-19 into rural areas due to a lack of precautions.

In a press briefing held on Wednesday, Ministry of Health Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said that seven states in the country have more than 25% positivity rate, while nine states have between 20-25% positivity rate. Twenty-two states have a more than 15 per cent positivity rate, 13 states have a five to 15 per cent positivity rate and one state has less than five per cent positivity, he added.

Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, Sikkim, Mizoram are states showing a rise in cases and a rise in positivity in the last three weeks, the health ministry official said. Tamil Nadu recorded a spike in active cases with 9814 cases and 367 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of infections to 2,63,3909 and deaths to 19,131. While Meghalaya and Tripura recorded an increase of 708 and 482 cases to their total caseload.

New cases of coronavirus infection in India have recorded over 2.50 lakh, taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 2,60,31,991 according to the Union Health Ministry data. The COVID-19 active caseload is 30,27,925 which now comprises 11.63 per cent of the total infections. The recovery rate is 87.25 per cent, the data stated.