guwahati the prolonged second wave in the northeast is mainly due to lack of covidappropriate behaviour and change in virus strains health experts saidunion health secretary rajesh bhushan has written to chief secretaries of kerala arunachal pradesh meghalaya nagaland tripura assam manipur sikkim and odisha to take up strict containment measures ramp up testing augment health infrastructure besides ensuring effective clinical managementdespite all efforts and advisories the covid19 positivity rate in manipur touched 1911 on thursday a total of 839 people tested positive out of total 4390 samples tested in the last 24 hours however in bigger states like assam despite detection of more than 2500 cases on thursday the positivity rate is 248 which is mostly due to the higher number of tests doneaccording to the central team which visited manipur the main reasons behind high positivity rate in the state is either the change in the virus strain or lack of covidappropriate behavior on the mortality rate being higher than the first wave the central experts said it might be due to the patients late detection of the virus comorbid conditions and the hospitals lack of infection control manipur health departments additional director sasheekumar manang said gatherings on the streets and localities are the key reasons for fast transmission of the virus the assam government was against total lockdown during the second wave to give some respite to the wage earners and those from the financially poor families but the ongoing total containment in several districts has failed to arrest the daily number of casessonitpur district administration had to declare a lockdown following violation of covidappropriate behaviour in the district which remains among the top three districts of assam from where the highest number of cases have been reported in the last 10 daysdaily cases are even more important than the positivity rate positivity rate comes down with more testing but everyday assam is reporting more that 2000 cases which has definitely spread the virus a senior health department official saida goofup in positivity rate confused the centre in case of arunachal pradesh where a large number of rapid antigen test figures dont get uploaded in icmr portal on time nevertheless arunachal has reported around 6 positivity which remains much higher than assam the difficult terrain turned into an advantage as it naturally isolated hill dwellers in the frontier state around 25 of the 404 cases on wednesday in arunachal were reported from the capital complex district aloneepidemiologists in mizoram said ne states are still registering more covid cases than the national average as the second wave of the covid19 pandemic hit the region much later than other parts of the country dr h lalrinmawia member of the medical operational team for covid19 constituted by the mizoram government said an indepth study would have to be undertaken to find out why more positive cases were being found on a daily basis in spite of over twomonths lockdowm in the statewith covid infection being steady at 5 in