# Covid

• Surge in covid -19 infections in the country entered its eighth week and daily cases crossed 6000 for first time in 200 days.
• The centre on Friday asked states to identify emerging covid hotspots by ramping up testing and monitoring trends of influenza like illness and severe acute respiratory infections.
• The rate of growth of infections has increased sharply in the last 10 days Or so with cases currently doubling in around seven days.
• Kerala, Maharashtra and Delhi have 10 or more districts with over 10% positivity.

# PMJAY

• A detailed analysis of the Pradhaan mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, the government’s flagship Health insurance scheme, shows those most vulnerable, whether in terms of states, communities or gender – have not been able to use it as well as the relatively better off.
• Scheduled castes and Scheduled tribes constitute about 28% of the population, their share in private hospital admissions at the national level since scheme inception was just 5% and 2% respectively.
• States with low poverty and disease burden, such as Kerala and Himachal pradesh, were found to be using services under the scheme much more than poorer states with high needs such as Bihar, MP, Assam and UP.

# Wheat output

• Wheat production this year is likely to be 1-2 million tonnes less than the current estimate due to unseasonal rain and hailstorms.
• The overall production will be nearly 5-6 MT more than last year.
• As there is export restriction in place, there will be no wheat shortage this year.

#Foreign exchange reserve

• The country’s foreign exchange reserves retreated from an eight month high to over $578 billion.
• This is a decrease of around $380 million from the previous week.
• Gold reserves decreased by $279 million to $45.2 billion.