Covid: Surge in Delhi, but Chandigarh bucks trend

Tribune News Service

Naina Mishra

Chandigarh, May 5

The city, which often follows a surge in Covid cases in the National Capital Region, has not seen a significant rise despite cases showing a rise in Delhi for over two weeks now.

Usually, Chandigarh starts seeing a spike in cases after two weeks of the surge in Delhi. The cases started growing in the second week of April in Delhi. Although the positivity rate is now hovering over 7 per cent in Delhi, the positivity rate of Chandigarh remains just over 1 per cent with daily cases ranging between 10 and 15. Experts say Chandigarh has so far been able to contain the spread of Covid despite a surge in the national capital.

Dr PVM Lakshmi from the Department of Community Medicine, PGI, said, “Despite a surge in Delhi, the positivity rate of Chandigarh is low. This is because a vast majority of the city population got infected with Omicron in the third wave. There is a lesser possibility of a reinfection in the present surge as far as Omicron and its sublineage BA.2 is concerned. The population of Delhi is more and there could be a possibility that some amount of population, let’s say 10 or 20 percent, remained unaffected in the third wave and are being infected in the present surge. This could have translated into more numbers in Delhi.”

“However, we need to remain cautious about the BA.4 and BA.5 variants flagged by South Africa as these could potentially evade immunity even among vaccinated individuals,” said Dr Lakshmi. Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the Indian Medical Association’s National Task Force on Coronavirus, said, “High levels of recent infections of Omicron would have left ‘residual population immunity’, which is recent enough to stop a big flare, but will keep the disease on a slow burn. However, if you test people, you will find a few (asymptomatic) positives. As you know, the TPR need not be directly comparable between two regions because testing strategies will not be the same.”

Dr Suman Singh, Director, Health Services, UT, said, “We cannot as of now predict the course of the infection. Delhi has a high number of cases, but so far ours is contained. Punjab yesterday showed a sudden jump in the daily cases. We would like to wait and watch for a few days.” Patients who are coming for testing have mild symptoms such as cold and cough that require home-based care only. Only one patient from the city is admitted to a city hospital,” said Dr Singh.

Some experts have contrasting views on the low positivity rate of the city and attribute it to poor testing. Dr Shahid Jamil, a noted virologist, said, “It’s unusual considering the population interactions between Delhi and Chandigarh and could mean many things. It’s also interesting that while districts of Haryana and UP, neighbouring Delhi such as Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Noida show a high percentage of test positivity, other districts in those states show 2 per cent or less.

This could be skewed testing. There appears to be otherwise no logical pattern.”

City positivity rate over 1%

Usually, Chandigarh starts seeing a spike in cases after two weeks of the surge in Delhi. The cases started growing in the second week of April in Delhi. Although the positivity rate is now hovering over 7 per cent in Delhi, the positivity rate of Chandigarh remains just over 1 per cent with daily cases ranging between 10 and 15. Experts say Chandigarh has so far been able to contain the spread of Covid despite a surge in the national capital.

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