E-Paper
Covid-19 cases surge in crowded areas of city
Gurugram:
Gurugram:
The city has seen a surge of 93 Covid-19 cases in the past 12 days, with most of them surfacing from densely populated areas like Sirhaul, Dundahera, Jyoti Park, Khandsa mandi, and Sector 12, among others. Although declared as containment zones, maintaining social distance has emerged as a big challenge that leads to spurt in cases from these areas, health officials said.
The officials say that the chances of infection are high in the areas with high population density compared to condominiums and gated colonies where Covid-19 cases were reported in March and April.
“In the initial phase, we were dealing with cases having travel history. They were mostly from condos where residents followed social distancing norms and other guidelines. But now, in crowded areas, chances of the coronavirus infection to spread are high,” said Dr Jaswant Singh Punia, chief medical officer (CMO).
Punia further said that maintaining social distancing in places where three to four people are sharing one room is difficult.
Dr Sudha Garg, district surveillance officer, said, “In most of the populated areas of the city, three to four people share one room, either with their family members or other employees working in same or different companies. Besides, other people also visit them in these rented buildings, increasing the chance of contracting the virus.”
COLLECTING SAMPLES
Punia said that they are focusing on identifying high risk contacts in the family of the Covid-19 case or others who came in contact, especially those with mild symptoms. “Once a case is detected, our team investigates about the people whom the infected person has met in the past 14 days. We have been seeing a trend that nearly 80% of the contacts are turning out to be positive. They all have mild symptoms or are pre-symptomatic,” said the CMO.
Like in Sirhaul, after three Covid-19 cases were reported, the health department team took samples of at least 24 persons, of which 10 had tested positive. At least 13 people have been infected by coronavirus in the area so far, the officials said.
Similarly, in Rajiv Nagar Sector 12, one person was infected. As a part of contact tracing, the health team collected 29 samples, of which seven were confirmed positive. In Jyoti Park, three cases were confirmed. Nine samples were taken, out of which five were found positive for Covid-19. In Dundahera too, one patient with links to Delhi contracted the virus in April. Later, nine people from the same building tested positive for Covid-19.
In Khandsa mandi, however, the health department started taking samples of vegetable sellers only after 17 Covid-19 cases were reported from Delhi’s Azadpur mandi. Of the 128 samples collected so far in Khandsa mandi, 25 have been tested positive for the deadly virus.
SURVEILLANCE
In these areas, health department teams are taking nose and throat swabs of people for RT-PCR and in some areas antibody tests are being done using rapid testing kits (RTKs).
“We finish the first round of surveillance in three to four days. In the second round, we ask the health team to randomly visit houses for random surveillance. In some areas we are sending mobile teams. We have also approached Ayush teams to visit these areas and provide immunity boosting tablets,” said Dr Garg.
According to the district surveillance officer, in some of the areas their teams found houses locked as migrants are leaving the city. In Sirhaul, the team had to do surveillance of 4,749 houses, out of which they found 988 houses locked. Likewise, in Dundahera where 4,723 houses fall under the perimeter of 3 kilometre radius, nearly 1,000 were locked.
Punia said the health teams were initially facing challenges in doing house-to-house surveillance as people were reluctant to open doors. Now, they have started cooperating with ASHA workers. In many cases, people have called the health teams after they noticed influenza like symptoms in any of their family members or neighbourhood family, the CMO said.
