Every sixth person sampled in Chandigarh in January tested positive

Naina Mishra

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Chandigarh, January 31

The city witnessed 23,593 cases of Covid-19 in January, the highest in a month ever since the start of the pandemic.

Every sixth person sampled this month tested positive for the virus. As many as 1,35,954 samples were taken and the positivity rate remained at 17.3 per cent.

UT Adviser Dharam Pal said, “The remarkable vaccination coverage in Chandigarh has helped in keeping the severity of the third wave low. The number of daily cases has already started declining.”

Despite the large number of cases this month, the fatality remained low as compared to the second wave. As many as 43 Covid patients died this month, of whom 12 were not vaccinated against the virus. A majority of the patients were admitted to hospitals in the city due to their comorbid conditions and had no major Covid-related lung involvement this time. In May last year, when the city was reeling under the second wave, around 17,399 cases were reported and 264 patients had died due to Covid-19.

The high number of cases reported this month was attributed to highly infectious Omicron variant, which was found in the community samples sent for genome sequencing recently. The daily cases had peaked on January 14 with 1,834 cases and 23 per cent positivity rate.

For the past 13 days, the active cases in Chandigarh are showing a successive decline, which indicates that the epidemic curve has flattened. The weekly positivity rate has also come down to 10.76 per cent. The hospital admissions have also started declining now and the occupancy has reduced to 22 per cent from 26 per cent recorded last Thursday.

Even as the UT Administration was prepared with 53.8 MT of medical oxygen for the third wave, city hospitals did not face heavy oxygen requirement as admissions remained low. In the second wave, the hospital occupancy was high at 85 per cent and there was an acute shortage of oxygen cylinders in the city hospitals.