Weekly Covid cases lowest since May

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 18

With weekly new infections lowest since May last year, nearly 98 per cent of oxygen support beds and 97 per cent of ventilator beds dedicated for Covid patients across the state are lying vacant today.

4 die, 119 new cases

• Chandigarh: With 119 fresh cases, the Covid tally in the state reached 2,66,428 on Monday. With four deaths, the toll went up to 2,989.
• The maximum fresh cases were reported from Gurugram (32), followed by Faridabad (21). One death each was reported from Hisar, Panchkula, Kurukshetra and Yamunanagar. TNS

As per the list of the dedicated Covid hospitals in Haryana uploaded on the Health Department’s official website, the state has 3,397 isolation beds (excluding ICU beds), 2,164 oxygen support beds, 602 ICU beds and 263 ventilator beds.

On Sunday, out of the 2,094 active cases across the state, barely 51 were under critical care in hospitals, 44 on oxygen support and seven on ventilator.

Of these, the maximum 13 were at Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College and seven each at Metro Hospital, Faridabad, and Government Hospital, Panchkula.

The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (PGIMSR) has only two patients on oxygen support, Bhagat Phool Singh Government Medical College, Khanpur Kalan (Sonepat), has two each on oxygen and ventilator, ESIC Medical College, Faridabad, has two on ventilator and Maharaja Agarsen Medical College, Agroha (Hisar), has only one patient on oxygen support.

Additional Chief Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, Rajeev Arora said the overall Covid situation had improved in the state, but people should not lower the guard and continue to follow all precautions.

The recovery rate in the state had also improved to 98.1 per cent. “It is good that healthcare workers are now concentrating on vaccination without the pressure of high number of cases,” said Arora.

Meanwhile, the state witnessed 1,354 new Covid cases in the week from January 11 to 17, which is the lowest in the past over seven months.

The last week of May 2000 saw 907 cases and after that 2,367, 2,760, 3,427 and 3,194 fresh cases were reported in the four weeks of June 2020.

The infection rate peaked from September 14 to 20, when 17,616 tested positive. A plateau in the infections came after this and fresh cases dipped to 12,525 and 10,096 in the subsequent two weeks.

After dipping to 7,878 fresh cases in the week from October 12 to 18, the number started surging again till another peak of 17,426 cases was witnessed in the week from November 16 to 22.

The cases have been falling since then with the last four weeks witnessing just 3,263, 2,161, 1,887 and 1,354 cases only.

Even the number of deaths, which were 213 in the week from November 23 to 29, declined to 53, 45, 33 and 35, respectively, in the past four weeks.

From over 20,000 active cases in November last year, the state is left with 2,094 active cases now, which comes out to be just eight active cases per lakh of population. Nuh district has only one active case, Mahendragarh 11 and Jhajjar, once a Covid hotbed, has only 14 cases. Fatehabad, Kaithal and Palwal have two cases each per lakh population. In the positivity rate, only Faridabad, Panchkula, Panipat, Rewari and Gurugram have critical rate of above six while Charkhi Dadri and Nuh have the desirable positivity rate of less than 2 per cent in the overall case positivity rate of 5.4 per cent.

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