Mizoram’s daily coronavirus positivity rate on Monday rose to 31.77% as against the national average of 1.42%, a health bulletin issued by the state government showed. India’s daily positivity rate is less than 3% for last 29 days, the Centre said.

The positivity rate is the percentage of people who test positive for the virus of those overall who have been tested.

Mizoram recorded 527 new cases on Monday, taking its tally since the beginning of the pandemic in January last year to 88,693. The toll rose to 302 with eight more deaths.

Chief Minister Zoramthanga’s 88-year-old sister died due to the disease on Monday morning.

The northeastern state has 13,997 active Covid-19 cases, while 74,394 patients have recovered from the infection.

Mizoram has detected nearly 24,000 Covid-19 cases in the last 20 days, The Indian Express reported. The count of the last three weeks comprises nearly 30% of the state’s total cases.

Over the last few weeks, Mizoram has also been among the five states contributing the most number of fresh infections to India’s tally, along with Maharashtra and Kerala, according to the newspaper.

Dr Pachuau Lalmalsawma, the nodal officer of Mizoram’s integrated disease surveillance program, told The Times of India on Tuesday that new variants of the virus have been detected in the state.

“We sent 350 samples for whole genome sequencing to the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani, West Bengal, in August, of which 316 were new variants, which included 3 variants of Delta plus, never been detected in the state earlier,” he added.

Apart from that, a study conducted by experts has shown that the practice of casually visiting friends and dining together has led to a high rate of transmission in Mizoram, PTI reported last week.