Gzb records 12 new Covid-19 cases in single day, gets 1,000 rapid test kits

Ghaziabad:

Ghaziabad:

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The district on Sunday recorded 12 new Covid-19 positive cases, the biggest rise in number of such cases in a single day. Health officials said that 11 of the positive cases were linked to people who attended various religious congregations, while one case was of a 71-year-old man from Indirapuram.

With the 12 new cases, the total number of Covid-19 patients in Ghaziabad has gone up to 42, and 10 of them have been discharged from different hospitals. On Sunday, three Covid-19 patients undergoing treatment were discharged from the L1-category hospital at Muradnagar after being cured.

“Ghaziabad recorded a total of 12 Covid-19 positive cases on Sunday. Eleven of them are the ones who attended religious congregations. Their second test reports have come positive while their first reports were negative. From now, we will be conducting tests only after at least seven days. The 11 are primarily from the Pasonda area in Sahibabad. They were brought to the quarantine centre after being picked up by police and health teams early this month,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer (CMO), Ghaziabad.

Meanwhile, the district has received 1,000 rapid test kits (RTKs), which will be used in conducting random tests in containment zones from Monday, the officials said.

“One of the 12 patients tested positive on Sunday is a 71-year-old man who was on chemotherapy at a hospital in Noida. He is a resident of Indirapuram. We are preparing documents so that he can be shifted to L3 category hospital at Meerut Medical College,” the CMO added.

Most of the 11 Covid-19 patients are native of Ranchi in Jharkhand, and had been in hiding at Pasonda, Gupta said.

Till Sunday evening, the health department was awaiting reports of 443 samples.

“Majority of the cases in Ghaziabad have come from areas of Masuri, Pasonda and Islam Nagar which have now become hot spots of the infection. We will now be conducting random tests in these areas from Monday with the help of 1,000 rapid test kits which we have received,” Gupta said.

The district administration on Saturday night sealed street number 4 at Islam Nagar after a woman, who delivered a child on April 16, had tested positive for coronavirus.

“The area, which houses about 100 families, has been sealed. The health department teams were taking up sanitization and other procedures as per health protocols. The administration has also removed two high-rises -- KDP Grand Savana at Raj Nagar Extension and Girnar Apartment, Kaushambi -- from the list of hot spot areas,” said Shiv Prakash Shukl, city magistrate.

District magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey also confirmed that the two high-rises were moved out of the hot spot list.

In another development on Sunday, a group of private doctors and health care persons lodged at a quarantine centre at Dasna took to social media and alleged lack of facilities at the centre.

The group has majority of people from different private health establishments who had tended to the 25-year-old woman who delivered child on April 16 and was declared corona positive on Saturday.

“We had to take to social media as there were dumps of garbage at the quarantine centre, besides dusty surroundings. There are mosquitoes and no tea or food was provided to us till Sunday afternoon. So, our group prepared videos and posted them on the social media,” said one of the doctors from the group.

When asked, the CMO said that some areas were not clean and there was some delay in provision of food.

“After the videos got viral, we rushed teams and garbage was cleaned and food was also provided. There was some delay in providing food to the quarantined persons. We will take up the issue with agency, which is tasked to provide services here,” he said.

So far as the use of RTKs are concerned, officials of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have said that such kits are not meant for diagnosis but should ideally be used for surveillance purposes to establish trends.

ICMR has recommended that since the gold standard frontline test for Covid-19 is real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which is aimed at early detection, the rapid antibody test could not be a substitute for it.

Unlike the RT-PCR, which detects the virus’ genetic material (RNA) in swabs to diagnose a current Covid-19 infection, rapid tests detect antibodies in the blood and indicate if a person has been infected in the past and has developed immunity to the virus. The rapid tests can show results within 30 minutes.