While the State government likes to assert that quick action and strict implementation of lockdown brought down COVID-19 cases, Suryapet, the district next only to Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) with maximum positive cases, suggests more verifiable reasons.
Suryapet experience proves that rise in number of positive cases is directly linked to its exhaustive contact-tracing, sample collection and tests, and in the process, it had also painted a worrisome picture for itself.
The district had 12 Markaz returnees on March 17, of whom only one from Kuda Kuda locality tested positive. His primary contacts and from all those who he came in contact with, about 58 samples were collected and tested. Eight of them were diagnosed positive.
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Another returnee at Nereducherla who initially tested negative and was released, later showed symptoms and tested positive. The infection reportedly did not spread in that locality.
However, the infection from Kuda Kuda to a town pharmacist — to a vendor and then into the Kothagudem Bazaar vegetable market, opened a Pandora’s Box. Official sources confirm that the COVID-19 chain of infection in one instance from the locality was nine-families long, the longest in the State, and all of them were traced.
In fact, of the nearly 500 contacts and 480 test samples linked to Kothagudem Bazaar, 44 persons had tested positive, a 53% of district’s total figure. A comparison of the percentage of positives also affirms Suryapet’s test accuracy is higher (total 747 samples tested — 83 diagnosed positive) at 11.11%, more than double the State’s 5.3% and the country’s 4.1%.
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But in the past week, there is a sea change in how COVID-19 is being approached and the initiative to change the norms was taken at the top-most level. District Collector T. Vinay Krishna Reddy in recent briefings clarified that “Samples of only primary contacts and those showing symptoms will be tested. Rest all will be in home quarantine and monitored regularly.” This has instantly transformed Suryapet into a ‘COVID-free district’ in the last week.
It was Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar who visited the district to review the ground situation, along with Director General of Police M. Mahender Reddy and Principal Secretary, Health, V. Santhi Kumari, who announced the district’s last three positive cases. Since then not a single sample has been collected or tested and there have been no positive cases.
However, a study of all the bulletins and briefings, suggests the direction would hardly allow identification of new cases, which eventually would make Suryapet COVID-free on paper.
Applying the ‘symptomatic and only primary contacts to be tested norm’ would bring much relief to Suryapet in retrospective. The bottom line being: Only one case of the total 83 was symptomatic, three others suspects showed symptoms and showed positive while in institution quarantine.
Two, Suryapet’s COVID-19 figure in view of the norm would have been 15 — two Markaz-returnees, their six family members, a cook and his son, the pharmacist, his two primary contacts and their two family members — with 10 already discharged. And it would not have been 83 cases.