Gurugram: Covid-19 spread slows down in densely populated localities

Gurugram: The district health department has observed a slowdown in the spread of Covid-19 among densely populated localities that were, until a month ago, hotspots

Gurugram: The district health department has observed a slowdown in the spread of Covid-19 among densely populated localities that were, until a month ago, hotspots for the disease. These areas come under four different primary healthcare blocks, namely Patel Nagar, Badshahpur, Wazirabad and Chanderlok. Of them, Patel Nagar has been denotified as a containment zone after no new positive cases were reported from the area in two weeks.

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Health officials attributed this improvement to “active” surveillance in containment zones, as opposed to “passive” surveillance deployed in other parts of the district.

According to Gurugram chief medical officer Dr Virender Yadav, passive surveillance includes testing people based on symptoms and contact history at designated surveillance sites, such as primary health centres (PHCs) and private labs, while active surveillance in containment zones involves aggressively testing as many people as possible, irrespective of the presence of symptoms.

Revised containment zone orders issued on September 29 show a significant drop in the number of ‘sealed areas’ in these localities, where public mobility continues to be restricted and only essential activities are permitted even as the lockdown restrictions continue to be lifted elsewhere. For example, Patel Nagar, which had 11 containment zones on September 18, now has none. Similarly, Badshahpur, which had 10 sealed areas, has just one. Wazirabad, which had nine sealed areas on September 18, now has four such zones, while Chanderlok (having 11 containment zones earlier this month) now has just four.

“While containment zones across the district have reduced in number, these areas have shown the most improvement,” said Dr MP Singh, the health department’s nodal officer for containment zone management in Gurugram.

Despite multiple requests, the health department officials did not provide data to show how much of Gurugram’s total caseload has been reported from these areas.

However, Singh said, “At present, we have 66 active cases in Badhshapur, 110 in Patel Nagar, 291 in Chanderlok and 138 in Wazriabad. I do not have the data on earlier cases, but I can say that we had far more active cases in these neighbourhoods about four weeks ago. They are some of the most populated areas in Gurugram. Homes are small, and many parts have informal housing, accelerating the spread.”

This trend does not, however, apply across all containment zones. “We have two exceptions to this trend, namely the Tigra PHC block and the Khandsa PHC block. But we are implementing the same strategy in these areas as we did in Patel Nagar, so we are hoping to see a decline in cases here in coming weeks,” said Singh. Khandsa, which had just three sealed areas on September 18, now has 12. Similarly, Tigra, which had 18 sealed areas on September 8, now has 23 -- with 393 active cases (the highest density of active cases in Gurugram).

The officials said that the Centre’s directive on September 7 restricts the use of rapid antigen tests to containment zones. “With all antigen tests concentrated in these areas, we have been able to isolate more positive people in the past three weeks than we were able to do earlier. Rapid response teams have been following up on patients in sealed areas in person, whereas in other parts the follow-up may happen only over a phone call, depending on staff capacity,” said Dr Jai Prakash Sharma, district surveillance officer, Gurugram.

Experts, on the other hand, said that there is also a chance that containment zone areas may have naturally attained a certain level of population immunity — or herd immunity — due to rapid spread of the virus earlier in the outbreak, thereby naturally slowing the transmission of Covid-19 within the community. “It’s a possibility, but it needs to be supported with evidence from sero studies. I think it is more of a fifty-fifty scenario. Gurugram has been more liberal with testing than other districts and the response must be credited,” said Dr Prabhakaran Dorairaj, vice-president (research and policy) at the Public Health Foundation of India.