Drop in virus cases in Haryana after three-week spike

CHANDIGARH: After three weeks of big surge in Covid-19 infections, Haryana saw a decline in virus cases last week with the state reporting about 2,200 less cases as compared to the week before. The drop in infections is significant in view of the ramped up sampling by health authorities. The health department had tested a record 2.81 lakh persons last week.

State nodal officer for Covid-19, Dr Dhruva Chaudhary, said the downward trend is seen after spike during the festival season. “We are witnessing lesser number of sick patients now. So evidently there is a gradual decline as was witnessed in the last week of September. However, we have to remain guarded and not become complacent,” he said.

According to health department statistics, the state reported 15,222 fresh infections last week (November 23-29) as compared to 17,426 reported a week before. Health officials said the infection rate had already started stabilising two weeks ago when the infection rate had slowed down. A slight increase of 356 infections was recorded from November 16 to 22 (17,426 cases as against 17,070 between November 9-15). This was in contrast to over 3,100 more cases reported in the weeks before.

Significant increase in sampling

The health authorities created a record by testing 2,81,079 persons last week as compared to 1,79,255 a week before. The sampling, thus, increased by over a lakh last week. “More than 80% samples tested last week were reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests considered the gold standard test for Covid-19,” said additional chief secretary (ACS), health Rajeev Arora. As per the data, 77,948 more RT-PCR tests were conducted last week compared to the week before. The positivity rate from RT-PCR testing is 7.7% and 4.3% from the rapid antigen tests.

8 dists have critical positivity rate

As per the statistics, eight of the 22 districts have critical positivity rate (more than 6%). They are Faridabad, Gurugram, Rewari, Hisar, Panchkula, Panipat, Ambala and Karnal. Sirsa and Mahendergarh, which showed critical positivity rate two weeks ago, have seen a drop in infections. Only two districts— Charkhi Dadri (1.6%) and Nuh (1.3%)— have desirable positivity rate of less than 2 %. The overall positivity rate of the state is 6.7%.

On Tuesday, 28 more patients succumbed to the virus while 1,871 fresh cases pushed the state’s infection tally to 2,35,997.