Covid-19: Ghaziabad records highest single day spike of 538 cases

Ghaziabad: The Ghaziabad district witnessed its highest single-day spike so far on Thursday with 538 new Covid-19 cases, and also crossed the mark of 29,000 cases since March last year

Ghaziabad: The Ghaziabad district witnessed its highest single-day spike so far on Thursday with 538 new Covid-19 cases, and also crossed the mark of 29,000 cases since March last year. According to control room records, the last single-day highest caseload was 303 recorded in the district on September 12 last year.

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The district’s tally now stands at 29,375 overall cases, which include 27,548 patients discharged, 104 deaths and 1,723 active cases.

The health department said that given the rise in the number of cases, they have planned to increase the number of Covid beds from 1,338 to 2,000 in private hospitals, and also from the 518 as of now, to 1,000 in the government sector.

“We have started work to maintain a total of 3,000 beds by April 30. For this, we have plans to convert one private medical college in Pilkhuwa (Hapur) to a Covid hospital with 300 beds, and to convert the ESIC Hospital in Sahibabad to an L2 facility, which will have 78 beds. With fresh cases rising, we expect more to come in the future, but we are focussing on early testing, early detection, contact tracing, surveillance and treatment in order to curb the spread of the infection,” said Ajay Shankar Pandey, Ghaziabad district magistrate.

The district has 333 ICU beds at present and 293 of these are in private hospitals.

Overall, the district at present has 19 Covid-dedicated hospitals, including two in the government sector.

The L2 category hospitals serve Covid patients having mild to moderate symptoms while L3 hospitals deal with Covid patients having severe health conditions.

“We are also focussing on a plan to spread awareness among the public about availability of beds in government and private hospitals. It is generally seen that patients face difficulty in ascertaining availability of beds even if beds are available. Our focus is now on creation of beds for Covid to deal with future exigencies,” the district magistrate added.

CASES RISING RAPIDLY

According to control room figures, the district clocked overall 25,000 cases on December 15 last year while the next 1,000 cases (overall 26,000) were reported in 15 days, by December 30 last year. However, the pace slowed down as the district reached 27,000 overall cases on March 23 this year, and thereafter there has been a spike.

The figure of overall 28,000 cases was reached on April 10, and within a span of five days, the district clocked overall 29,000 cases on Thursday.

“Given this trend, the cases are expected to rise. The best strategy is to focus on containment and surveillance in containment zones where multiple cases have emerged. All precautions are a must now as the rate of infection this year is higher than the previous year,” said Dr VB Jindal, former president of Indian Medical Association (Ghaziabad).

Last year, HT analysed the data of seven-day daily average cases in Ghaziabad and it was estimated that the district achieved its peak on September 17, 2020.

“At present, we have a condition of a peak, but we don’t know when it will stabilise. Estimating the spread and infectivity of Covid-19, the fresh cases may further go higher,” Dr Jindal added.