Eighty-one per cent of the 401 samples sent by the government for genome sequencing have tested positive for the UK variant of Covid-19, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said on Tuesday.

Expressing concern over the Covid-19 situation, the chief minister urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to widen the vaccination ambit to cover those younger than 60 as the mutant has been found to be infecting young people more, an official statement quoting him said.

Amarinder Singh also appealed to people to get themselves vaccinated and stressed the need for the Central government to urgently open up vaccination for a larger section of the population.

“The process needs to be expedited,” he said, pointing to the fact that experts had found the existing Covishield vaccine to be equally effective against the UK variant - B.1.1.7. It was essential to vaccinate more and more people to break the chain of transmission, he said.

The health ministry on Tuesday said that the doubling time of Covid-19 cases in India has decreased from 504.4 days on March 1 to 202.3 days on March 23, highlighting that six states have reported a surge in daily new cases and together account for 80.90 per cent of the new infections reported in a day.

Punjab is one among these six states which account for 80 per cent of cases, and among 10 states showing an upward trajectory of the infection.

The state reported 2,319 fresh Covid-19 cases on Monday, taking the tally to 2,15,409, while 58 fatalities pushed the death toll to 6,382.