E-Paper
Positivity declines to 1% in first week of January
The number of active Covid-19 cases in Ghaziabad is on a constant decline and the sample positivity rate was around 1% in the first seven days of the new year
The number of active Covid-19 cases in Ghaziabad is on a constant decline and the sample positivity rate was around 1% in the first seven days of the new year.
Officials marked December as the month when they started seeing the declining trend in active cases although they had expected a spike during winter.
An analysis of the situation in the district showed that the sample positivity rate (or SPR, which is the number of postiive cases per 100 tests) has been declining since November when it stood at 4.14% with 4822 positive reports out of 116,399 tests that month. This was 2.99% in December with 3034 positive reports out 101,496 tests.
From January 1 to 7, there were 153 positive samples out 15,243 tests. Since February, The officials said that the overall sample positivity since March when the outbreak was detected is about 4.58% with 29118 samples testing positive out of total of 635,919. The number of positive samples is greater than the total cases as a person could have been tested multiple times.
“The decline is not only in the district but also in the state of UP as well. However, we are still carrying on with our testing and surveillance and also focussing on targeted testing in high incidence areas,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer.
The state control room records also indicate a declining trend with total of 23031 total cases including 1510 active cases as on November 30 while the total cases on December 31 stood at 26109 including 484 active cases.
Till January 7, the total cases have stood at 26254 which include only 282 active cases.
The experts said that the cases have shown a steep decline in past one and half months and the trend is continuing in January.
“Overall, there has been considerable reduction in number of patients coming in. Although the active cases are only a few hundred but all precautions like wearing face mask and frequent hand-washing besides maintaining social-distancing should continue. The arrival of vaccine is possibly very near and it will certainly help,” said Dr Ashish Agarwal, president of the Indian Medical Association – Ghaziabad.
“It is expected that the declining trend could possibly be result of herd immunity against the infection. Anyways, trend shows that about 80% of patients remained asymptomatic while 15% developed mild/moderate symptoms. The rest 5% required oxygen intervention or ICU admission and only 2% of the 5% required ventilator support. So, it is also possible that large proportion of the population got the infection and it passed away without giving any symptoms,” he, added.
