Daily cases cross 110-mark in Ghaziabad
GHAZIABAD: Ghaziabad recorded 111 fresh Covid-19 cases on Thursday, the highest number of daily cases this year since February 10 when 104 fresh cases were reported in the district. Health officials, however, said that despite the rise in cases, the severity of infection is very low and none of the patients is hospitalised.
According to official records, the number of active cases in the district is 375 and the overall tally of cases since the start of the pandemic stands at 85,916. The total cases include 253 in May so far, 789 cases in April and 195 in March, besides 1,700 and 27,052 cases in February and January, respectively. “The number of fresh cases is increasing, but the severity of infection is still low and all patients are in home isolation. Since most cases are asymptomatic, not a lot of people want to get tested, leading to a low number of daily tests,” said Dr Rakesh Gupta, district surveillance officer.
According to the health department, the district is conducting an average of 3,517 tests per day since April 1 whereas the daily target assigned to Ghaziabad by the state government is
7,400. “The consistently high number of fresh cases only in this region (Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar contribute a large percentage to Uttar Pradesh’s tally of daily cases) also indicates that we could be moving from a pandemic towards an endemic (a disease outbreak is endemic when it is consistently present but limited to a particular region). We are keeping track of all daily cases and mapping them,” Dr Gupta added.
Health experts agree that the pandemic might slowly be turning endemic. “The high number of cases in this region and lack of severity show that this could be turning into an endemic. The
higher vaccination coverage and high rate of sero-prevalence have also reduced severity to its lowest levels so far. Still, citizens need to take precaution,” said Dr Ashish Aggarwal, former president of the Indian Medical Association (Ghaziabad chapter).
With new cases coming in, the positivity rate (the percentage of people who test positive for the virus compared to all those who have been tested for it) for the week of April 29 to May 5 marginally increased to 1.52%--the highest in the past four weeks. For the week of April 22-28, the positivity rate was 1.19%, while it was 0.80% and 0.24% from April 15-21 and April 8-14.