Nearly 90 per cent of India is witnessing a high Covid positivity rate, the government said on Tuesday adding that 640 districts out of the 734 are above the national threshold level of 5 per cent positivity rate.

The active cases have spiked up massively as the country has been badly hit by the second wave of the deadly virus leaving the health system in India overwhelmed with a shortage of beds, oxygen, medicines as well as vaccines.

Currently India has 3,715,221 active cases and reported 249,992 total fatalities.

The vaccination programme in India which started on Jan 16, was last month widely expanded to include citizens above 18 years of age as a part of the Centre's Liberalised Pricing & Accelerated National COVID-19 Vaccination strategy.

However, most of the states are struggling to vaccinate those between 18-44 years of age group owing to a shortage of vaccine supply.

So far, over 170 million people (of a total population of 1.35 billion) have been administered with vaccines, the government said in a statement.

"New states like Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland are seeing a high positivity rate and we need to take corrective measures to break this chain of transmission," Lav Agrawal, Health Ministry spokesperson, said.

Meanwhile, states/Union territories that are showing a decrease in daily new cases include Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Gujarat.

"Approximately 18 States/UTs showing this decreasing trend," Agarwal said.

He also informed that multiple initiatives have been taken to increase the oxygen supply.

The Indian Council Of Medical Research (ICMR) has revised norms for testing with a particular focus on rural India.

ICMR said the focus should be on Rapid Antigen Tests which will help in surveillance and aid in breaking the chain of command rather than RT-PCR tests.

"There is no need to do a second RT-PCR test and we are now moving from a 70-30 ratio of RT-PCR to the reverse of more Rapid Antigen Tests," said ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava.