After Delhi, we’re testing most in NCR: Gurugram administration

GURUGRAM: The Gurugram administration on Friday claimed that among all the 19 districts that come under NCR, Gurugram has conducted the highest number of Covid-19 tests after Delhi.The gap with Delhi is, however, huge.
During a press conference in the city, deputy commissioner Amit Khatri shared that Gurugram is testing 2,600 people per million, while adjoining Faridabad is conducting 1,078 tests per million, Sonipat is testing 1,045 people per million and Jhajjar 554 people per million.
Till date, Gurugram has collected 38,821 samples. This is far lower than Delhi's 5,72,530 samples but more than Faridabad (25,864), Ghaziabad (24,582 till Thursday) and Noida (23,591).
Delhi, which is conducting the most number of tests in the country currently, is collecting 28,895 samples per million people. Haryana is testing 9,662 people per million, lower than neighbouring Rajasthan which is testing 11,057 people per million but more than Uttar Pradesh which is conducting 3,474 tests per million.
Khatri also pointed out that Gurugram is, at present, conducting 2,000 tests daily and plans to improve this figure soon. “We are testing vigorously to identify positive cases and immediately isolate them to curb the spread of the virus,” said Khatri.
The administration gets a status update from patients in home isolation every day through the zoom videoconferencing app, Khatri pointed out, and has also started free counseling sessions for such people. “We have so far received more than one lakh calls on our helpline regarding Covid-19,” he said.
Describing the recent trends, he said that the active cases in Gurugram have declined. “We used to have more than 2,400 active cases which has reduced to 1,183,” he said, adding that around 8,000 immunity booster kits have been distributed among people in high-risk areas.
The administration along with health department is aggressively conducting testing in the eight large outbreak regions. In these eight regions, sero, antigen and RT(PCR) tests are being conducted by health department.
Also, police presence in these areas will further increase in the coming days. Nikita Gehlot, Deputy Commissioner of Police (headquarters), pointed out that 2,000 policemen are deployed in Covid-19 duty across the district. “We are tracing Covid patients whose contact information is incomplete. Till now, we have received details of 1,500 people, out of which 1,200 have been traced. 270 people are still untraceable as they submitted invalid phone numbers while giving their samples. However, things have improved after the health department issued show-cause notices to private labs for not collecting complete information of people at the time of sample collection. We are visiting people who are not reachable on phone to ensure that they are following the norms,” she said.
During Friday’s discussion, Khatri assured that Gurugram health infrastructure has been upgraded to handle Covid-19 cases. “We have every arrangement in place. Of the total 4,708 hospital beds, 1,486 have been reserved for Covid-19 patients. 192 of these are ICU beds and 92 are equipped with ventilators. At present 375 beds, 102 ICU beds and 38 beds with ventilators are occupied by Covid-19 patients,” he said.