E-Paper
3 cities account for one-third Covid-19 cases
A separate analysis based on HT’s own data showed that one in every three cases reported in the country has come from three cities – Mumbai, Delhi or Ahmedabad.
The ministry of health on Wednesday updated the number of cases of the Covid-19 across districts, showing that while the 18,000 patients are spread across 426 of the 731 districts in the country , just 12 districts account for half the cases in the country, indicating how the contagion has spread in clusters.
A separate analysis based on HT’s own data showed that one in every three cases reported in the country has come from three cities – Mumbai, Delhi or Ahmedabad.
To be sure, the data released by the ministry accounts for only 18,330 cases. According to HT’s dashboard, which is based on data from the Covid19india.org tracker and state health departments, there were 20,004 cases as of Tuesday night. According to the ministry’s data, 12 districts across eight states – Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Indore, Pune, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Thane, Surat, Chennai, Bhopal, Agra and Jodhpur – account for 50.8% of all 17,250 Covid-19 positive cases for which district is known. The remaining 1,080 cases are people who have been found positive from Tablighi Jamaat members who were quarantined in Delhi. They have not been classified into any specific district. According to this data, the pandemic has now spread to 58.3% of the country’s 731 districts. There are 222 districts with up to 10 cases, 66 districts with 11-20 cases, 42 districts with 21-30 cases, and 96 districts with more than 30 cases.
Interestingly, the concentration of cases in Delhi does not show up in this data as the national capital is not a separate district in itself like other high-caseload cities such as Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Indore and Pune are. Delhi, due to its complex nature of being the capital, is divided into 11 revenue districts. Three of these districts – Central Delhi with 184 cases, South East Delhi with 130 cases and West Delhi with 122 cases – feature in the 25 worst-hit districts in the country.
In a separate analysis based on HT’s dashboard on Tuesday , Delhi, which was broken down in the ministry data into separate districts, reported 2,272 cases and stands only behind Mumbai (3,451 cases) as the worst-hit city in the country. Ahmedabad came in on the third spot with 1,378 cases. This also meant that 35.5% of all patients in the country can be traced to just these three cities.
Only eight cities account for more than half (51.3%) cases in the entire country, highlighting the urban spread of the virus.
