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Chandigarh tricity’s daily Covid cases drop to 65, lowest in 7 weeks
Saturday’s cases comprised 26 from Mohali, 25 from Chandigarh and 14 from Panchkula; one woman died in Panchkula
Tricity’s Covid-19 cases continue to wind downwards, as only 65 people were found positive on Saturday, a first in over seven weeks.
It was December 30, 2021, when the tricity had logged 55 infections, following which the figure climbed steadily, hitting an all-time high of 3,907 on January 16.
Saturday’s cases comprised 26 from Mohali, 25 from Chandigarh and 14 from Panchkula.
With more recoveries, tricity’s active cases also dropped further to 622, compared to 3,698 two weeks ago. Mohali still has 289 infected patients, Chandigarh 249 and Panchkula 84.
Meanwhile, a virus-related death was reported in Panchkula, where the death toll had stayed stable for the past five days.
The 59-year-old woman was fully vaccinated, but suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic kidney disease.
With this, tricity’s Covid deaths in February have reached 70, including 38 in Chandigarh, 20 in Mohali and 12 in Panchkula.
On the bright side, there was no fatality in Chandigarh that had been losing residents to the virus for 24 straight days. Mohali has also not reported any death for the past one week.
So far, 91,545 people have contracted Covid in Chandigarh. While 90,136 have recovered, 1,160 have died.
Mohali’s caseload of 95,391 comprises 93,958 recoveries and 1,144 deaths. In Panchkula, 43,462 out of total 43,960 patients have been cured, but 413 have died.
PGIMER allows OPD registrations for two hours
Considering the consistently declining Covid-19 cases in Chandigarh and neighbouring states, the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) has decided to scale up its physical out-patient department (OPD) services.
From February 21 (Monday), the hospital will allow walk-in registrations from 8am to 10am.
When it had first resumed its walk-in OPD facility on February 14, the registration timings were set for only an hour from 8am to 9am.
Besides, the institute will continue to provide tele-consultation OPD services, whose registrations will be open from 10.30am to 11.30am from Monday. The timings were 9.30am to 10.30am earlier.
“As the Covid-19 situation is getting back to normal, the institute has taken a call to increase registration timings by an hour to facilitate more patients. Already, during this week when registration counters were open for an hour, the daily average count was over 6,000. With the increase in registration timings, more rush is expected at OPDs,” said Dr Surjit Singh, director, PGIMER.
The director cautioned, “The fight against Covid is still on and large gatherings of people can prove detrimental for our already immune-compromised patients at OPDs. So, I request the public to visit OPDs only if necessary and use tele-consultation as an alternative. Those visiting OPDs must follow Covid-appropriate behaviour.”
Before the contagion started, over 10,000 patients visited PGIMER’s OPDs daily. After a sudden spike in the daily cases in early January, the hospital had decided to suspend its walk-in OPD facility from January 10, stating that the decision was taken to prevent exposure of comorbid patients to Covid infection. However, it continued to provide physical consultations after prior appointments through tele-consultations.
