Kanpur adds 7,049 cases to its tally in 30 days

KANPUR:The weekend restrictions that are meant to break the coronavirus chain don’t seem to have worked in the industrial city where the number of Covid-19 positive patients has steadily gone up in the past one month.

Kanpur had a total of 1,627 cases and 494 active cases on July 11, just hours after the curbs began on July 10 night. A month later, the total number of cases in Kanpur has gone up to 8,676, including 4,692 active cases.

In the last 30 days, Kanpur added 7,049 new cases to its tally with an overall positivity rate of 9.28%.

Between the first weekend closure and the second one, there were 596 new cases. That week’s average positivity rate was 8.8%. From July 18 to 24, the new cases nearly doubled to 1,033 with the positivity rate jumping to 13.5%. From July 25 to 31, there was a further rise of 1,804 new cases in seven days with the positivity rate at 13.6%.

In the fourth weekend closure, the city had 2,645 new cases and the positivity rate went up to 17%.

Dr Kalim Ahmad Khan, a medical expert, said the weekend restrictions did not yield the desired results as it failed to slow down the rate of new infections. People have a tendency of coming

out of their homes on the weekends with their families and visiting popular places.

That was perhaps the reason for the weekend curbs. But it was not enough to negate what had taken place during the remaining five days of the week when people had free access to various places.

A senior health department official, who was recently moved out, said people started venturing out in large numbers when the Unlock phase began. Many of them did not wear masks. Nor did

they maintain social distancing. “The situation that now prevails was bound to happen at some point of time,” he said.

As the situation was not coming under control, district magistrate Brahmdev Ram Tiwari went for a total lockdown in 10 police station areas, covering a population of nearly million, on July 20. The decision helped in containment of cases in these areas, but they increased elsewhere, said a senior police officer not willing to be named.