Air gets worse, dense fog likely
NOIDA: The city and its adjoining areas are likely to witness dense fog and haze for the next two days due to low wind speed, leading to rise in the air pollution levels, India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Friday.
On Friday, Noida, Ghaziabad and Greater Noida were the top three polluted cities of country -- a second in the past four days -- with the pollution monitoring agencies seeing no respite for the next three days.
According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the air quality index (AQI) of Ghaziabad on Friday was 375 (‘very poor’) -- worst in the country just like on February 9 and 10 -- against 356 on Thursday. Similarly, Noida’s AQI was 363 -- second most polluted city in country -- on Friday against 311 a day earlier, followed by Greater Noida with an AQI value of 352 against 344 a day earlier.
An air quality index value between 101 to 200 is considered ‘moderate’, between 201 and 300 is ‘poor’, between 301 and 400 is ‘very poor’ and above 400 is considered ‘severe’.
According to the weather analysts, the wind speed on Friday dropped as the region fell into a low pressure area and is likely to continue to be so till Sunday.
“The region will see dense fog on Saturday, bringing down the visibility to around 100 metres,” said Kuldeep Srivastava, head, regional weather forecasting centre, India Meteorological Department.
The experts said that temperatures are around season’s average only but the wind speed are very low.
“Due to low wind speed during the morning hours, the condensation of moisture would continue. Also, since the low speed of winds leads to accumulation of particles, the haze formatting will be there. This could bring the visibility down to less than 100 metres from early morning hours to about 9am,” said Mahesh Palawat, vice-president (meteorology and climate change) at Skymet, a private weather forecasting agency.
Meanwhile, the minimum and maximum temperatures for Noida were recorded at 12.6 degrees and 26 degrees Celsius, respectively, weather data showed.
According to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), not much change in the pollution situation is expected over the next few days.
“Surface winds are low and wind speed is likely to marginally improve during day time. The ventilation is likely to stay in the same range and no significant change in air quality index is expecting for the next couple of days. The air quality index is likely to stay in the very poor category for the next two days. The air quality index is likely to marginally improve to lower end of very poor to poor category is forecasted for February 15,” said a SAFAR statement on Friday.
The turnout for Covid-19 vaccination in Ghaziabad went down further on Friday with the district recording only 39.41% coverage when it was the turn of front-line workers to take shots. Friday’s turnout is the lowest so far among all the vaccination sessions that started on January 16 in Ghaziabad, officials of the district health department said.
Also, the officials said that Covaxin was administered to front-line workers on Thursday and Friday and resulted in no adverse event following immunization (AEFI).
On Friday, as many as 1,555 people got the shots out of the day’s target of 3,946. On Thursday, the coverage had stood at 45.33% with 1,559 front-line workers getting the shots out of a target of 3,439.
“The turnout remained at an all-time low on Friday as many front-line workers of different departments did not come up at the centres. We have time and again told their department heads to spread awareness and expedite the vaccination process, but the things have remained slow,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical office, Ghaziabad.
He said that Covaxin was administered to beneficiaries for the first time on Thursday and Friday.
“On both the days, there were no AEFI reported in the district. Prior to this, we administered Covishield which resulted in minor AEFI events in some cases during earlier days of vaccination. However, our experience with both the vaccines has been very encouraging and no beneficiary suffered any health complication,” Gupta added.
District magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey did not take calls for his comments on the issue of declining turnout.
This was the eighth day of the vaccination drive that began on January 16.
On the first day of vaccination, 94.75% (379 of 400) beneficiaries received their shots. On January 22, the turnout dropped to 81.28% (3,251 of 4,000), on January 28 it was 71.91% (4,095 of 5,695), January 29 had 72.69% (4,190 of 5,764), February 4 had 70.05% (3,557 of 5,078), and on February 5 the figure was 63.74% (3,129 of 4,909).
“Vaccination is the need of the hour and there has to be more awareness among people to take it up,” said Dr Ashish Agarwal, president of Indian Medical Association – Ghaziabad.