Noida saw 90 cases in a week, most are from rural clusters

NOIDA: The number of weekly Covid cases in Noida has nearly doubled from 51 to 90 in a span of 14 days. Data sourced from the health department has suggested that rural areas and offices that have resumed operations account for a major part of these recent cases.
Between last Monday and this, Noida has seen 104 Covid cases and a majority of them have been reported from the Sector 16 office of a media house.With 50 employees testing positive so far, including 31 from Noida, the media house is slowly emerging as a major cluster in the city. At least five workers of other media groups — spanning across editorial, production and distribution departments — have been found to have Covid.

According to the health department, about 60% of the recent cases have come from rural clusters — JJ Colony, Harola, Mamura, Nangla Charandas and Nithari. “There is no definite source of infection for these patients. They live in congested localities, which makes contact tracing very difficult. We are trying to make containment stricter in such areas,” a health department official said, adding that stricter containment of hotspots was the only strategy available if the city has to live with Corona.
The official said that the administration’s increased focus on JJ Colony and a rise in the number of sample collection has “dug up fresh cases in the area”.
Meanwhile, only five cases have been linked to hospitals in the past week.
Officials expressed concern over the recent spike in cases, saying it could cast a cloud of uncertainty on easing lockdown norms in the near future.
Covid cases started in Noida as early as March 5 and remained in single digits for the next three weeks. However, with 24 cases, the last week of March saw a sudden spike in numbers. Cases reduced by the second week of April and increased again the following week. Between April 27 and May 3, when the second phase of the lockdown had ended, 52 cases were reported in Noida, followed by another 51 the following week. After another week of fewer cases, the graph shot again with 90 cases last week. On May 18, Noida had reported 31 fresh cases, the highest single-day spike so far.
On Tuesday, three persons who tested positive in Noida, taking the Covid count to 362 in the district. Among those who were found to have Covid was a 20-year-old man who worked as a support staffer at GIMS and was already in quarantine. Another patient was a 39-year-old woman from Salarpur and the third, a 38-year-old man from Gijhore.