Gurugram’s Covid-19 tally almost doubles in three days

Gurugram:

The district registered 97 new Covid-19 patients on Sunday, taking the tally of positive cases to 774, health officials said. With this, the district now accounts for a whopping 37% of all Covid-19 cases in Haryana, as per the state health department’s bulletin.

The state reported a total of 2,091 positive cases till Sunday evening.

According to the officials, Gurugram’s tally of positive cases has almost doubled in just three days, with 369 new Covid-19 cases recorded since May 28 when the tally stood at 405.

Notably, it took more than two months for the district to record its first 350 cases, the officials said. Till May 27, 337 people were found positive for the virus.

The health officials attributed the sudden spike in Covid-19 cases in the district mainly to relaxation in lockdown restrictions. Currently, the district has 487 active cases, they said.

This trend, experts say, is worrying, especially since the district’s test positivity rate (TPR) -- the ratio of positive cases to samples tested -- is also on the rise.

According to official figures, Gurugram’s TPR soared from 10% on May 27 to 24% on May 28, and further climbed up to 53% on May 29.

Meanwhile, the number of new tests being conducted daily has not significantly increased.

For example, on May 22, when 353 new samples were tested from Gurugram, the district recorded just 11 new Covid-19 cases, resulting in a TPR of 3%. However, on May 28, 286 new samples from the district were tested, of which 68 were found positive, with a TPR of 24%. On May 30, more than half of the 350 new samples tested came back positive.

“An increasing test positivity rate is not necessarily a cause for alarm, as it indicates that surveillance systems are working effectively. However, given that the number of daily tests being conducted has not significantly improved, it could mean that background prevalence of the disease in the population at large is quite high,” said Rajesh Kumar, epidemiologist and former professor of community medicine at PGIMER, Chandigarh.