Active Covid cases cross 6K mark; festive season may see reduced testing

The number of active Covid-19 cases in Gurugram crossed the 6,000 mark on Thursday for the first time, according to the daily health bulletin issued by the district

The number of active Covid-19 cases in Gurugram crossed the 6,000 mark on Thursday for the first time, according to the daily health bulletin issued by the district health department.

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In 24 hours, the district recorded 692 new infections. The total number of patients currently in home isolation or hospitalised increased to 6110.

According to official data, more than 450 people are recover every day in the city. But active cases are consistently moving upward.

Out of the total active cases, 93% are under home isolated and almost seven percent are hospitalised.

Health officials cite that it is likely that the number of active cases will decline in the next 10 days due to a recovery rate of almost 83%. As reported by HT on Thursday, active cases might be around 5100 by November 30 based on the state health department projection for the current month.

Dr. Virender Yadav, Gurugram’s chief medical officer, said, “Since it is Diwali time, the team will observe the Covid-19 trend during the weekend and if required meeting will be held with private labs and hospitals on November 17 or 18 to tackle cases.”

Yadav said he expected the walk-in testing footfall and overall testing to decrease during the weekend. On Thursday, 3832 tests were conducted, slightly lower than Wednesday’s 4161. “Diwali is a major festival. Therefore, we are expecting not many people would turn up for the Covid-19 until it is an emergency,” said Yadav.

Another reason for reduced testing, Yadav said, would be the concern on the testing kit stocks. “The department is running short of antigen kits. Only RT-PCR tests will be administered till the department receives kits from the state government next week,” he said. Both government and private labs conduct nearly 800 rapid antigen tests a day. It is likely that without antigen kits, testing will drastically fall down by nearly 600 tests a day.

More so, evening testing camps will not be held on the evening of Diwali, while routine sample collection at Civil Hospital, sector 10 and Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHCs) and 14 testing camps as per the department’s schedule will continue on Diwali day, that is, November 14.

“Routine testing will happen at the sample collection centres. Health workers will do contact tracing and hold testing camps. Routine evening camps, however, will not take place on the evening of Diwali,” said Yadav.

For the evening camps, health department stations its two testing vans outside malls or market areas. Tests are administered to only symptomatic patients. For more than a month, these vans were stationed at different locations each day to facilitate people to get tested for Covid-19 while they visit markets. Through evening camps, the district health department administers Covid-19 tests to over 200 people every day.

A few private labs said that the routine walk-in testing will be handled till 3pm on Diwali. “Generally, team conducts tests on collected Covid-19 samples during the night hours. On Diwali, the night team won’t be working instead the tests would run on Sunday morning. Despite this, the target is to deliver test report within 24 hours,” said Dr Rishabh Rajput of Modern Lab.