India’s virus hot spots on recovery road: Data

Regionwise positivity rates offer glimmer of hope even as some new areas of concern emerge in south, N-E

NEW DELHI: The punishing second wave of the coronavirus disease is receding in 19 Indian states and Union territories, some of which were its early epicentres, although some new hot spots have emerged in the south and the North-East where infections continue to surge, HT’s analysis of nationwide positivity rates shows.

Seven out of every 10 Indians live in the regions seeing an improvement. Among the 19 are Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, some of which were ravaged by the second wave with the health care systems of most being overwhelmed by a rush of hospitalisations.

This trend comes as a glimmer of hope even as the Covid-19 toll continue to rise to grim new records. Daily deaths from the disease have remained above the 4,000 mark in the last four days despite a drop in new cases over the past week. To be sure, any drop in case trajectory generally take 14 days to reflect on daily deaths as studies have shown that the median time between someone testing positive for Covid-19 and dying from it is around 13.8 days.

The average weekly positivity rate – proportion of samples tested that return positive for Covid-19 – has gone down in states and UTs that are home to 69% of the country’s population, while 15 states and UTs, home to the remaining 31%, have seen an increase between May 7 and May 17, data shows.

Experts said that this drop in positivity rate is largely due to the application of non-pharmaceutical interventions like lockdowns, and that while cases are declining in most regions, actions taken to control the spread of the disease cannot be weakened just yet.

Areas in the country’s south and North-East, which fared relatively better than the rest of the country during the worst of the second wave though April, are now seeing positivity rate climb the most. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, along with north-eastern states such as Meghalaya, Man

ipur, Sikkim, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh, feature among the regions that have seen positivity rate rise the most between May 7 and 17.

The analysis took the positivity rate data from the first week of May (week ending May 7) as the base for comparison as it was perhaps India’s worst week in terms of cases – the sevenday averages of positivity rate and daily infections both peaked around this time in the country. At the government’s Covid briefing on Tuesday, health ministry joint secretary Lav Agarwal said that daily cases have been declining since May 7. All positivity rate figures mentioned here are sevenday averages as it evens out inaccuracies in testing over weekends. A rising positivity rate in a region indicates that the virus is spreading fast within the community. As a rule of thumb, tracking a region’s positivity rate serves as a good barometer for whether cases are going to increase or decrease in the coming days: a rising positivity rate generally means cases will rise in the immediate future, while a dropping positivity rate tends to precede a drop in new infections. Importantly, this trend has sustained without daily tests going down in the majority of the country. In fact, the number of daily tests in the country have increased 5% between May 7 and May 17 – on average, a total of 1,813,242 samples were tested every day in the country in the past week, against 1,724,665 on May 7.