Daily Covid-19 spike, positivity rate at lowest since mid-April

The district on Tuesday reported 2,659 new cases of coronavirus infection, the lowest since April 21, and a positivity rate of 23%, the lowest since April 18, with officials and experts citing the imposition of a lockdown as the key reason for arresting the outbreak to an extent in Gurugram, despite persisting variations in overall testing over the past three days

The district on Tuesday reported 2,659 new cases of coronavirus infection, the lowest since April 21, and a positivity rate of 23%, the lowest since April 18, with officials and experts citing the imposition of a lockdown as the key reason for arresting the outbreak to an extent in Gurugram, despite persisting variations in overall testing over the past three days.

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“The numbers are now stabilising across the state due to the multiple measures adopted, including lockdown,” said Rajeev Arora, additional chief secretary of the health department.

As per the projections, the state, including Gurugram, from where the maximum number of cases were reported in the state, the second wave of Covid-19 was expected to peak on or before May 15.

At 5,024, the district reported the highest number of cases on April 29, after which the ongoing night curfew was extended to a lockdown. Currently, the lockdown, which is labelled a Mahamari Alert, Surakhshit Haryana by the state government, is going to last at least till May 17 to control the transmission of infection.

However, Haryana still has more than 100,000 active cases, while the active case count in Gurugram declined to 37,143 on Tuesday from a high of 39,256 reported on May 2.

Even as the district’s test positivity rate, the proportion of positives out of the samples tested, declined over the past three days from 29.4% (on May 8) to 23.4% (on May 11), it is still higher than Delhi’s positivity rate, which has dipped below 20%.

At the state level, Haryana’s positivity is currently 34.3%, which is the fourth highest across the country. Until last week, the state reported a positivity rate of almost 38%. Accord to the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, an epidemic is considered to be under control only if the positivity rate is below 5%.

There has been a variation in testing too, which is also stabilising the positivity rate. “Currently, on average, 4,000 antigen tests and 7,000 to 8,000 Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests are administered. Following the government’s directive, antigen tests have been increased in the city. Even the overall positivity rate through RT-PCR has also come down, which could be due to the lockdown,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer.

Although the number of cases is declining, there has been no major dip in hospitalisation numbers. Until Tuesday, at least 2,374 people were admitted to hospitals, which has remained roughly around 2,400 since April 30. Deaths have also increased, with at least 124 reported in the past 11 days, while 111 deaths were reported in the whole of April.

Health experts said that the declining phase might be prolonged compared to the intensity at which cases peaked. “Effective lockdown restrictions in worst-affected states, such as Maharashtra and Delhi, are now showing their impacts. The shifts happening in the testing can play a certain degree of role in declining positivity rate, but a reasonable lockdown is more impactful,” said Dr Rajib Dasgupta, chairperson, Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

“Since it is a respiratory (disease), it is likely the infection curve might flatten at a slower rate compared to the intensity at which cases surged in April,” he said.