Active cases in Gurugram nearly halve in a month
ENHANCED TESTING Recovery rate of 83% has helped reduce strain on health infrastructure
GURUGRAM: Even as the district’s total Covid-19 case tally rose to 6,748 with the addition of 170 new cases on Saturday, the number of active patients in Gurugram has almost halved over the past month from its peak of 1,999 on June 14, shows health department data. While officials said the trend indicated that surveillance and containment measures in the region have been effective, experts said the apparent turnaround notwithstanding, the district should be cautious.
Active cases dipped to 1,036 on July 11 (a 48% decrease). During the same period, the number of reported infections more than doubled, from 3,294 cases on June 14. The district has 30% of Haryana’s total 20582 cases, and 21% of the state’s 4,891 active cases.
Gurugram’s recovery rate (at 82%, up from about 50% in midjune), has helped prevent a rapid build-up of active cases, leaving enough resources to treat those in need of medical interventions. Simultaneously, health department officials explained, surveillance efforts have slowed down the growth of new positives.
Dr. Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, Gurugram, said, “In early June, the recovery rate was stagnant at 50%. As soon as we increased our testing capacity, it improved to 83% within three weeks. That’s because our surveillance has been able to find and isolate new positives more quickly now, leading to less severe cases of Covid-19 and quicker recoveries. We have also been able to slow down the growth of new positives, which naturally has a positive bearing on the number of active cases.”
According to Dr. Jai Prakash Sharma, the Integrated Disease Surveillance Program’s (IDSP’S) district surveillance officer, antigen tests, which is highly specific, have played a key role.
“While RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, considered to be the gold standard in testing for Covid-19) tests take at least 24 hours to produce a result, rapid antigen tests have allowed us to isolate over 300 positive cases within 30 minutes of being tested. If the same people had been tested via RT-PCR, they would have continued to spread the virus for a whole day before their results came. From over 200 infections a day in early June, we are now finding closer to 100 new positives daily, suggesting that we have been able to cut the chain of transmission,” said Dr. Prakash.
Antigen tests, which have tripled the district’s testing capabilities, have also driven down Gurugram’s test-positivity rate (or TPR, which is the number of positives per 100 tests in percentage), from 23.9% in June to 5.5% in the first week of July. Tests have also increased to close to 2,000 per day, up from an average of 925 tests per day in the last two weeks of June.
A reducing TPR with increasing tests, officials said, also indicated that transmission among the community has been curbed, to some extent.
“These are the three main numbers which, when viewed in relation to each other, suggest that our response to Covid-19 is on the right track: high recovery rate, reduction in active cases, and a reduced positivity rate. If our response had failed somewhere, we would be seeing much more positive cases through antigen tests,” said Dr. Ram Prakash, district epidemiologist, Gurugram.
Officials added that, with the drop in active cases, Gurugram’s health care infrastructure is sufficiently equipped to handle a future surge, if it arrives. “At the current rate, we are expecting between 700 to 1000 active cases in Gurugram by the month end, which is manageable. Most will be asymptomatic and will require home isolation or, at worst, secondary care,” said another doctor with the IDSP in Gurugram, on the condition of anonymity.
While he was reluctant to corroborate this, Dr. Ram Prakash said, “There is little chance of our health system becoming overwhelmed in the near future.”
“Antigen tests produce more false negatives than RT PCR tests. Since they are making up the bulk of testing in Gurugram at the moment, it’s important to remember that the district’s improvement is based on data from tests that are inherently less reliable than the RT PCR method,” said Dheeraj Singh, a city-based data scientist tracking Covid-19 data in Haryana.
The district faces plenty of challenges still.
Hindustan Times had earlier reported that nearly 8% of the new Covid-19 cases being reported in the city are going untraced due to incorrect contact details provided by patients, thereby hindering surveillance and contact tracing, said district administration officials, adding that there are more than 270 positive coronavirus disease cases that cannot be traced till now.