Positivity rate touches new high at 12%

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, May 3

Refusing to take a break, the average daily Covid cases continue to register exponential rise by crossing 1,100-mark, while the average positivity rate also touched a new high of 12 per cent in the last week.

Officialspeak

The augmentation will help ease out the current situation as 633 beds — 517 L2 and 116 L3 — are still vacant in the district. However, all 116 L3 vacant beds are available in private hospitals as all 16 L3 beds in the lone Civil Hospital remained occupied till this evening.—  Varinder Kumar Sharma, Deputy Commissioner

The key indicators of virus surge, the count of average daily Covid cases mounted to 1,139 at 12 per cent positivity rate, even surpassing the state’s 11.7 per cent, between April 25 and May 1.

The 24-hour average of new infections rose by 334.01 per cent in 18 days from 341 recorded between March 10 and April 13, taking it to 717 between April 15 and 21, 934 between April 20 and 26 and 1,062 between April 23 and 29.

With the increasing caseload, Ludhiana continued to remain way ahead from all other districts and re-emerged as the Covid capital of the state.

The nearest rival was Mohali, which reported 860 average daily cases between April 25 and May 1, which was 24.49 per cent more than Ludhiana.

Among other districts, Jalandhar recorded 585 average daily infections, Bathinda 550, Patiala 526, Amritsar 449, Mansa and Muktsar 241 each, Fazilka 238, Hoshiarpur 236, Pathankot 205, Gurdaspur 202, Sangrur 165, Faridkot 140, Kapurthala 137, Ropar 133, Ferozepur 124, Moga 92, Tarn Taran 85, Fatehgarh Sahib 62 and Barnala remained safest with minimum 57 average daily positive cases in last week.

On the average positivity front, Mohali remained the leader with highest 23.9 per cent, followed by Mansa 23, Fazilka 20, Bathinda 16.7, Muktsar 16.2, Moga 13.4, Patiala 11.7, Faridkot 11.3, Amritsar 10.7, Ropar 10.6, Ferozepur 10.5, Jalandhar 10, Barnala 9.9, Pathankot 9.4, Hoshiarpur 8.9, Sangrur 7.9, Tarn Taran and Kapurthala 7.3 each, Gurdaspur 6.3, Fatehgarh Sahib 4.6, and Nawanshahr reported the lowest average positivity rate of 4.5 per cent in last week.

515 beds added, 633 vacant

Giving a big respite to the critical Covid patients seeking hospitalisation with oxygen and ventilator support, the district administration has added 515 more beds — 391 Level-2 and 124 Level-3 category — in the last two days.

Sharing details, Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma told The Tribune that the augmentation helped ease out the current situation as 633 beds — 517 L2 and 116 L3 — were still vacant in the district. However, all 116 L3 vacant beds were available in private hospitals as all 16 L3 beds in the lone Civil Hospital remained occupied till this evening.

Of the 517 L2 vacant beds, 320 were available in private facilities while the four government hospitals in the district had 197 available till 5 pm.

Vaccination stopped

With no vaccine available, Ludhiana on Monday stopped the ongoing vaccination drive for 45-plus age groups. “We have exhausted the entire Covishield stock, while a few hundred doses of Covaxin are still available,” confirmed the District Immunisation Officer Dr Puneet Juneja.

Today, a total of 916 persons were inoculated — 542 second dose and 374 first dose — following which all sites were shut till further order. “Tomorrow we will run only four session sites for immunising Covaxin beneficiaries with a second dose,” informed the DIO. He added that fresh vaccine stock was expected on Tuesday, and if it happened, the inoculation could restart from Wednesday onwards.