Covid-19 positivity rate around 8% in Noida, doctors urge people to mask up

Officials said that of the 731 active patients across the district, 21 are being treated in hospitals, though there are no serious patients. “All the patients who are undergoing treatment at hospitals have either mild symptoms or comorbidities that may cause complications,” said Dr Manoj Kushwaha, district surveillance officer

Covid-19 cases in Gautam Budh Nagar are seeing a steep rise with a positivity rate of around 8%, which was around 4% last week and less than 0.5% the week before.

A woman being vaccinated against Covid-19 at the district hospital in Noida. (Sunil Ghosh/ HT)

The district reported 148 new cases on Thursday, taking the total number of active cases to 731. The two districts of Lucknow and Gautam Budh Nagar now contribute to more than half of the active cases in Uttar Pradesh, the state health department said.

The health department has also asked both the districts, along with Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Varanasi, Jhansi and Gorakhpur to stay on alert.

“We already have 240 beds at the Noida Covid hospital. There are also dedicated beds in the community health centres. If cases continue to increase, we will include more hospitals. Meanwhile, we had notified several private hospitals in January for Covid-19 treatment, which were not denotified later. All these hospitals have the infrastructure to treat Covid-19 patients. The good news is that we don’t have any serious patients yet,” said Dr Sunil Sharma, chief medical officer, Gautam Budh Nagar district.

Dr Sharma added that the district is testing about 1,500 people daily and has also increased focus on contact tracing and vaccination. However, he cautioned that cases may be higher than what is being reported and people need to be more careful. He said that many people either do not get themselves tested or use the rapid antigen tests available for use at home.

“We can track cases that have been tested at authorised government and private laboratories. But there are many who either test at unauthorised labs or just use home testing kits and don’t report, fearing their routines may get disrupted. So, cases may be much higher than those being reported,” said the CMO.

Dr Sharma added that it is the sole reason why overall testing numbers are not increasing as people are unwilling to get themselves tested.

“Almost every public place has people roaming around without masks. People have almost forgotten the golden rules of masking, sanitising and maintaining social distance. These three things need to be followed to control cases and people need to strictly start using masks again,” said Dr Sharma.

Officials said that of the 731 active patients across the district, 21 are being treated in hospitals, though there are no serious patients. “All the patients who are undergoing treatment at hospitals have either mild symptoms or comorbidities that may cause complications,” said Dr Manoj Kushwaha, district surveillance officer.

Health officials added that it has been a pattern that cases increase in Noida every time there is a rise in cases in Delhi, possibly because of the fluid interstate borders. They said that maximum cases are from Noida’s urban areas where more people travel to and from Delhi for work.

“Every time cases have risen in the past, we have seen the same trend across Delhi, Noida and Gurugram. While overall cases in Ghaziabad are less, nearly all are from trans-Hindon areas that have more movement of people across the Delhi border. Even in Gautam Budh Nagar, we have very few cases reported from Jewar and most new cases are from Noida,” Dr Sharma added.

Dr Sharma added that public awareness and precautions are needed to control the rising Covid-19 cases.