Ggm district’s doubling rate improves from 7 to 36 days
GURUGRAM: In three weeks, Gurugram’s Covid-19 doubling-rate has improved from seven days (on June 11) to 36.5 days (on July 1). Health department officials attributed this slowing of new cases to four main interventions —increase in testing and quicker turnaround time in reporting results, door-to-door screening in containment zones and large outbreak regions, improved contact tracing, and strengthening of home isolation facilities.
Gurugram last had a doublingrate of 36 days in the last week of April. By June 11, cases were doubling every seven days, fastest among India’s 20 worst affected districts (by reported case load). As of Wednesday, however, only four out of India’s 20 worst affected districts had doublingrates higher than Gurugram’s — Mumbai (43 days), Ahmedabad (67 days), Jaipur (69.5) and Indore (79 days) — according to an independent analysis conducted by www.paragkar.com/covid19, using data sourced from Covid19India.org — a public dashboard updated daily on the basis of state health bulletins.
Hindustan Times has not been able to independently corroborate this analysis for districts other than Gurugram.
Dr Ram Prakash, district epidemiologist, Gurugram, said, “For the last two weeks we have been testing more than 900 samples daily on an average. Test results are coming back from the lab within 24 hours. So we are able to isolate positive cases quicker. Earlier, test results were taking anything between 36 to 48 hours and we were not able to isolate positive cases quickly enough.”
Prakash added that extensive screening in containment zones for Covid-19 symptoms has helped curb transmission of the virus in badly hit areas.
The slowing down of the spread is reflected in other data points as well. During the first two weeks of June, Gurugram had an average test-positivity rate of 51%, with 373 tests on aver
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There may still be cases outside of containment areas which aren’t being picked up. We will not know until the health department starts collecting more samples.
DHEERAJ SINGH, data scientist
age daily. In the second half of the month, the test-positivity rate reduced to 12.4 %, while testing increased to 925 tests per day. The average number of new positives also reduced from 190 cases per day to 114 new cases per day.
Dr Jai Prakash, the Integrated Disease Surveillance Program’s district surveillance officer in Gurugram, said, “We have also had an internal restructuring after the appointment of a new chief medical officer on June 12. Duties have been reorganised, so officers who were overburdened are getting more support.” Though unable to provide any data, Prakash said, “Contact tracing has been strengthened.”
However, experts warned that the apparent improvement in Gurugram’s Covid-19 response should be viewed with an important caveat. “Targeted sampling for RT-PCR tests has slowed down. Private labs are still collecting the bulk of samples from Gurugram, while antigen tests have been confined to large outbreak regions. There may still be cases outside of these areas which aren’t being picked up. We will not know until the health department starts collecting more samples for confirmatory tests,” said Dheeraj Singh, a city-based data scientist tracking the district and state level Covid-19 data.
Rajesh Kumar, an epidemiologist and former professor of community medicine at PGIMS, Chandigarh, concurred. “Slower doubling rate and lower TPR is desirable. But on the other hand maybe the right people are not being tested anymore..” Dr Virender Yadav, CMO, Gurugram, did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.