Ludhiana district emerges as driver of Covid surge in state, says CMC study

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, April 20

Ludhiana is among five districts that have emerged as drivers of Covid surge in the state, a recent study has revealed. The other districts are Mohali, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Patiala.

The study, a copy of which is with The Tribune, was conducted by the Department of Community Medicine at Christian Medical College (CMC) in Ludhiana.

In the advice sent to the state government, CMC experts have stressed the need to focus on prevention and restriction of public movement. They also suggested that the vaccination campaign should be regulated as there were large gatherings of people with doubtful measures witnessed outside most of the vaccination centres.

According to the experts, the virus surge has changed to an exponential curve from April 14. “There will be a large number of positive cases and the state will report 6,000 cases per day by May 5 if urgent measures are not implemented in the driver districts,” they warned.

The projection as on April 18 showed that the number of daily positive cases would continue to rise unabated till May 5 with daily figures projected to touch new high every day.

The status as on April 14 revealed that the peak in the surge of fresh infections was recorded on April 3. “As of February 10, the curve shows the peak will stop at 1.5 lakh cases in the end of June after cumulative start from February.”

Meanwhile, the state has ramped up the contact tracing to test and treat the patients. Touching an all-time high, the contact tracing mounted to 17.2 per case ratio between April 12 and 18.

Since January, the contact tracing was ramped up gradually and it started from 12.3 between January 3 and 9; 11.8 between January 10 and 16; 12 between January 17 and 23; 11.6 between January 23 and 30; 13.1 between February 1 and 7; 10.4 between February 8 and 14; 16.6 between February 15 and 21; 11.6 between February 22 and 28; 12.9 between March 1 and 7; 15.6 between March 8 and 14; 14.4 between March 15 and 21; 13.8 between March 22 and 28; 13.1 between March 29 and April 4; and touched 15 per case ratio between April 5 and 11.

Level-3 bed occupancy more

The cumulative capacity and occupancy comparison as on April 18 showed that the level-3 occupancy was more than level-2 in the government and private hospitals across the state. While 45.1 per cent (627 of 1,389) L3 beds were occupied in private facilities, 31.3 per cent (206 of 658) L3 beds were occupied in the government hospitals.

Similarly, 37.9 per cent (1,363 of 3,597) L2 beds in private hospitals and 14.5 per cent (568 of 3,909) L2 beds in government sector were occupied.