Urban areas more vulnerable to Covid spread than rural

Nitin Jain
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, July 20

Covid has also divided the urban and rural areas when it comes to the positivity rate, a key indicator of virus surge, in the state, the government has confirmed.

While the urban areas recorded a 2.2 per cent hit rate, it was 1.5 per cent in the hinterland of the state during the last month, the official figures have revealed.

While Ludhiana, among seven districts, including Fazilka, Ferozepur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Sangrur and Fatehgarh Sahib, failed to upload any data on the Cova mobile application for the last one month, following which their data could not be analysed, the data of the rest 15 districts was examined to categorise urban-rural distribution in the Covid cases.

Mohali topped the state with maximum 7.1 per cent positivity rate in rural areas and 4.4 per cent in urban areas, followed by 6.7 per cent rural and 3.2 per cent urban in Ropar, 3.9 per cent rural and 2.6 per cent urban in Bathinda, 2.4 per cent rural and 1.7 per cent urban in Patiala, 1.3 per cent rural and 1.2 per cent urban in Muktsar, 1.3 per cent rural and 0.9 urban in Tarn Taran and 1 per cent rural and 0.7 per cent urban in Nawanshahr.

In the rest eight districts where the urban areas reported more positivity rate than rural areas, Mansa topped Punjab with maximum of 4.4 per cent hit rate in urban areas and 3.7 per cent in rural areas, followed by 2.4 per cent urban and 2.1 per cent rural in Barnala, 3.3 per cent urban and 2 per cent rural in Faridkot, 1.7 per cent urban and 1.6 per cent rural in Jalandhar, 3.7 per cent urban and 1.4 per cent rural in Pathankot, 4.3 per cent urban and 1.1 per cent rural in Moga and 2.2 per cent urban and 1 per cent rural in Amritsar.