Have we already seen the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic phase and is the curve stabilising, are the questions that are crossing everybody’s mind in the city.
Well going by the statistics, it appears that there is a trend towards flattening, but health officials are keeping their fingers crossed. They say that this is the most crucial phase and human behaviour is going to play a vital part in stabilising the curve.
The period of July and August was the bad phase, as the district recorded over 37,000 cases, of them 80% were under GVMC city limits, and there were over 250 deaths. On June 30, the total number of cases were 976 and deaths were 5. But by end of August the number of cases shot up to 37,106 and death toll had gone up to 258. September was the month, when the curve started to flatten, as it recorded about 13,000 cases and deaths were about 150.
“From averaging around 1,000 cases per day in August, we dropped down to 150 to 200 cases, from the first week of September. This is a significant drop of over 75%, according to a conservative estimate,” said District COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College P.V. Sudhakar.
“In October till date, the district recorded close to 2,800 cases and if the trend continues, then we should end up close to 5,000 cases, till the month- end,” he said.
But he was fast to add that it was too early to say that the curve is flattening.
“We have seen resurgence not only in Kerala and Delhi, but in other European countries also,” he said. According to him, human behaviour is going to play a key role in the next couple of months, if the curve is to stabilise. “In England and in France and in some other European countries, there is a resurgence, as people started to flout the basic protocols, once the economy was opened up. But at the same time, New York city, which was recording close to 1,000 deaths during the peak period, almost dropped to zero, as the people started to follow the protocols earnestly,” said Dr. Sudhakar.
“We have to learn both from the negative experience of Europe and the positive side of New York city,” he said.
“It is now the responsibility of people to follow the basic key protocols, such as wearing a mask, keeping social distance and maintaining personal hygiene, especially frequent washing of hands with soap or alcohol-based sanitisers,” he said.
Delay in test reports
On the prolonged delay for test reports, Dr. Sudhakar said that RTPCR testing has been stopped for a couple of days to clear the backlog.
Following ICMR guidelines to conduct RTPCR tests on all who tested negative in rapid antigen test, the load on the virology lab has increased phenomenally.
“When the capacity of the lab is to test 2,000 to 3,000 samples, it was stretched to 5000 by adopting various means, and now the figure has gone up to 7,000 per day. That is why, we are first clearing the backlog first and hence the delay for those who tested recently,” said an official from the virology lab at KGH.
