COVID-19 cases decline, deaths increase in Chandigarh as September ends

Naina Mishra
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, October 1

Advertisement

As September comes to an end, the Union Territory has started to witness a decline in the number of positive COVID-19 cases, and daily tests.

However, COVID deaths have increased with every passing week.

September has recorded 100 COVID-19 deaths whereas August reported only 39 deaths.

At least three deaths were reported daily this month—due to co-morbid conditions like condition like Diabetes and Hypertension.

According to Chandigarh’s data, 35 deaths were reported in the fourth week and 31 deaths during the third week.

The first and the second week saw 18 and 21 deaths respectively.

Former head of the department of community medicine, and school of public health at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Rajesh Kumar, said: “Death is a true indicator of an epidemic as with every death case, it is assumed that are 1,000 infections out there. Usually, there is a log of 7-10 days between the decline in cases and the decline of deaths. The decline of cases has already begun in Chandigarh in the past two weeks. However, the true picture will be seen only after declining in deaths.”

During the first week of September, the infection rate increased as 1,822 people tested COVID-19 positive out of 5,802 tests—this implied, that every 30th coronavirus test was positive.

The infection rate declined to 12.8 per cent by the second week.

It has been noticed, that the number of infections also decreased in the last 14 days.

About 3,353 infections were reported between September 15 and September 30, as compared to 4,042 infections by the preceding fortnight.

Dr Kumar said: “The decline is clearly evident when it comes to active cases. The active cases decrease only when less number of positive cases is being reported daily. It has been observed in pandemics like these that the situation starts improving when cases rise abruptly and thus creating fear in public.”

“The downward trend is always slower in a pandemic. The national serosurvey results show that very less number of population has been infected with the virus. This implies that a large proportion of the population is still susceptible to virus and outbreak can happen in new areas. The residents should be more cautious in the impending festival season,” said Dr Kumar.

Decline in testing: 

From 1,200 tests per day, the tests have dropped to 700 to 800 in the last four days.

Now, the cases in Chandigarh are varying between 120 and 200. Previously, the highest number of infections recorded in a single-day ranged between 350 and 400.

Arun Gupta, UT Principal Health Secretary, said: “In the last three to four days, the testing numbers have gone down on a daily average of 700 to 800 tests. Earlier, we were testing up to 1500 tests. A major factor in the decrease in testing observed is that the people do not feel the need to get themselves testing. The numbers have dwindled to 100-150 tests per day in a private laboratory. These labs were testing 300-400 tests daily. An inference can be drawn from here that the infections have decreased.”

Gupta added: “Other reasons could be that as less number of people are testing positive, the chain of immediate contacts who require testing has also decreased.”

COVID-19 data: 

Week analysis: