Lucknow load adds to worries

The week also added a high in terms of recovery and deaths – 38,747 people recovered in the last seven days and 509 Covid patients died. While the recovery rate showed an incremental increase from the previous week – from 75.4% to 76.7% – in the last seven days, the case-fatality ratio remained almost unchanged at 1.4%.

However, the concern remains the slow increase in test-positivity rate despite a stupendous increase in testing which has reached nearly 1.5 lakh tests a day.

As on Sunday, the test-positivity rate was 4.07% with some days the daily positivity rate reaching 5%.

But the larger concern is Capital Lucknow, which continues to be the worst-affected district. Nearly 15% of the cases reported this week (6,689) came from Lucknow alone. The weekly average growth rate in cases is 3%, higher than the state’s average and has higher test-positivity rate too, according to the government.

Till now, 39,188 people have tested positive in Lucknow – nearly double than the second most-hit district Kanpur Nagar. Out of the 39,188 infected people, 29,117 have recovered, 516 died, and 9,555 are still recovering.

While Lucknow added 847 Covid cases in the past 24 hours, Prayagraj reported the second highest count at 370, followed by 338 new cases in Kanpur Nagar. In terms of death count, Kanpur Nagar is on the top of the list with 527 deaths with Lucknow closing in.

A senior health official said that the situation in Lucknow is more alarming as it is not clear why the district is recording a high number of new positive cases each day without any sign of the infection slowing down.

“The situation in Lucknow is pretty tight. Around a month ago we had attributed the increase in the cases to high number of tests being conducted in the district. We cannot give the same reason now. We have a severe transmission in Lucknow and we have to find out a way to break the chain of infection,” said a senior health official on condition of anonymity.

Including Lucknow and Kanpur Nagar, there are six districts with more than 2,000 active cases. They are Prayagraj with 3,726 active cases, Gorakhpur with 2,898, Varanasi with 2,092 and Gautam Buddha Nagar with 2,008 active cases.

The two NCR districts of Gautam Buddha Nagar and Ghaziabad that had reported a decline in cases last month are now reporting a spike, mimicking the situation in nearby Delhi. The only glimmer in the two districts is the very low death count — 73 in Ghaziabad and 48 in Gautam Buddh Nagar.

An additional 11 districts – Ghaziabad, Bareilly, Moradabad, Meerut, Aligarh, Saharanpur, Jhansi, Barabanki, Ayodhya, Shahjahanpur and Muzaffarnagar have more than a thousand active patients.