In July, Covid testing sees jump of 86 per cent in Chandigarh

Naina Mishra

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 29

The testing for Covid-19 increased by 86 per cent in July as compared with June.

With 5,535 tests, July has accounted for 41 per cent of the total tests conducted in the city so far, which is higher than the testing numbers of previous months. Around 532 positive cases also surfaced in July.

The testing dipped in June with 2,967 tests, while in May, 3,564 tests were conducted. The increased testing in May was due to the surge in cases from Bapu Dham Colony. More than 1,300 tests alone were conducted in colony.

The health authorities have attributed the eased testing protocols as one of the reason for residents reporting to city laboratories for testing. Arun Gupta, UT Health Secretary, said: “Now, patients don’t have to go for institutional isolation while waiting for their reports to come. Earlier, patients feared contracting infection and did not report for testing.”

Gupta added: “We are also sampling the non-household contacts of Covid positive patients. Earlier, we were isolating the non-household contacts of positive cases. Last month, the average sampling per day was 100 and now, we are sampling more than 200 persons each day.”

Highest positivity rate – 9.6%

Every ninth person tested positive for Covid-19 out of 100 samples collected this month, which is the highest positivity rate in the past four months. The positivity rate in June was only 5.1 per cent, whereas in May and April, the rate was 5.7 per cent and 6.3 per cent, respectively.

A test positivity rate is the percentage of Covid-19 tests that reported positive. A high positivity rate indicates that testing is relatively limited to people with high suspicion of Covid-19.

“The positivity rate is naturally on the higher side in targeted population than the random sampling. We have conducted targeted sampling in UT after diagnosing the symptoms. The un-targeted sampling was only for foreign returnees. However, the infection rate among them is lower than the general population,” said Gupta.