Coronavirus: Delhi likely to see rise in number of Covid cases, but experts say nothing to be worried about

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Tuesday hat the rapid testing kits that have been ordered will reach the Delhi by Friday, when increased testing in the hotspots will begin.

With the Delhi government planning to ramp up mass testing and random testing in the city’s coronavirus disease (Covid) hotspots, will there be a spike in the number of infections in the capital? Yes, experts say, but it is not something to be alarmed about.

Harsh a member of X.P.C NGO, sprays chemical disinfect on a Delhi Police vehicle near India Gate during day fifteen of the 21-day nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of Coronavirus, in New Delhi. (Sanjeev Verma/HT PHOTO)

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s government has ordered 50,000 kits for testing people and wants to procure 100,000 kits for rapid or antibody testing in the city where, until Wednesday night, 669 people had tested positive for the disease and nine had died.

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“Naturally, if you start testing more people, there will be an increase in the numbers. But it is not something people should be scared of. More aggressive antibody testing will help us detect cases early and treat them, reducing the mortality,” said Dr Jugal Kishore, head of community medicine at Safdarjung Hospital.

The city-state’s government is aiming is to double testing from 500 samples a day to 1,000 samples.The government has already put in orders for 50,000 kits. Another 100,000 rapid testing kits have also been ordered to test people in the hotspots.

Expecting a surge in the number of cases, the government has also laid out a plan for treating up to 30,000 active cases at a time.

“We are on a growth trajectory and any increase in the numbers should not scare the people because the government is prepared even for the worst-case scenario,” said Dr SK Sarin, director of the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences and head of a five-member panel advising the chief minister on Covid-19 preparedness.

Kejriwal said on Tuesday hat the rapid testing kits that have been ordered will reach the Delhi by Friday, when increased testing in the hotspots will begin.

“In the meanwhile, we are preparing guidelines on who should be tested in the hotspots. Once the kits arrive, the priority will be Nizamuddin area as there is a high likelihood that the people in the area might have come in contact with those from the Markaz,” said an official from Delhi’s health department, on condition of anonymity.

Of Delhi’s 669 cases of Covid-19, 426 have been linked to the mid-March congregation of a Muslim missionary group, the Tahblighi Jamaat, in the Markaz, its six-storey headquarters in Nizamuddin Basti, which has emerged as the biggest hotspot of the disease in the country.

An 82-year-old patient from Nizamuddin West had in March end tested positive for the disease without any travel history or clear history of contact with any of the positive cases reported until then. Another man from the area, a 73-year-old,who died on March 31 at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, also did not have any clear history of travel or contact with a carrier of the infection.

The authorities are planning random testing in hotspots like Nizamuddin and Dilshad Garden.

“We cannot do door-to-door testing; besides the cost, there is also an issue of consent. However, the known contacts with the positive cases or at high risk to get the disease should be tested,” said Dr Sarin.

These tests will also help the government in deciding containment strategies.

“More testing means more information. Yes, the numbers will likely shoot up, but it will improve the government’s response. In high-risk areas, the antibody tests can help in detecting the asymptomatic cases as well and ensure that they get quarantined. Apart from that, if there is high positivity in an area – for example you test 1,000 people and 800 turn out to be positive – then the government can decide to physically lock down the area to prevent them carrying the infection to other parts of the city,” said Dr Shobha Broor, former head of the department of microbiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

The converse is also true. “If there are 40,000 people in a quarantine area, and more than half test negative then we can say they were never exposed to the infection,” said Dr Sarin.

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Rapid testing is also a helpful way of establishing the burden of Covid-19.

“The rapid testing is antibody or blood-based and the samples can be easily collected without too much risk of healthcare workers getting the infection. If we are able to do a large number of tests, we will come to know the burden of disease. It is helpful in the study of epidemiology later on but in the short term, it also helps in planning response. Based on the antibody levels in the population, we can predict how many infections are likely to happen in an area rather than going blind as we are currently doing,” said Dr Kishore.